10 Modernist Masterpieces by Marcel Breuer

Breuer excelled at the Bauhaus, and quickly joined the staff. It was in 1925 while working as the head of the cabinet-making workshop that he created his most famous work, the Model B3 Chair, also known as the Wassily Chair - an inspired steel-tube and waxed-cotton construction.

Breuer was fascinated by modern materials and techniques, and his work epitomised the Bauhaus principle of bringing together art and industry. For example, the idea behind his revolutionary bent-steel furniture was borrowed from bicycle makers and plumbers.

Though Breuer is best-known for steel and glass, he tried out various materials. These stripped-back, rectangular wooden chairs show the influence of the Dutch designers Gerrit Rietveld and Theo van Doesburg.

Though he always held a fondness, and a business-sense, for chairs, Breuer produced a range of furniture during his time at the Bauhaus. This cabinet was made for the experimental Haus am Horn designed by Georg Muche for the Werkschau exhibition of 1923.

Together with Richard Schadewell, Breuer designed this telephone set. Its smooth black bakelite, Futura font, and combined speaker and receiver represented a sleek, minimalist take on the wooden and metal boxes of earlier years.

In 1927, Breuer turned to architecture. The BAMBOS house was designed by Breuer (and others) for the Bauhaus Dessau campus. This prefabricated house was designed for the students, and to visually contrast with the grander buildings that Walter Gropius designed for the tutors.

By 1928, Breuer had established a reputation as a designer, and opened his own design studio in Berlin, specialising in furniture and interiors. His vision of a pared-back life spoke to a new generation of distinctly modern aesthetes.

By the 1930s, the Nazi party were gaining power in local elections across Germany, modernist design was derided, and foreign teachers and students were persecuted. In 1932, the Nazis on the Dessau city council closed the Bauhaus. Breuer, meanwhile, continued to work.

In 1935, at the suggestion of Walter Gropius, Breuer left Germany for England. There, he joined the Isokon design company and,  inspired by designs by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, started experimenting with bent plywood. Though by 1937, he had moved to the United States.

In the US, Breuer turned to architecture. Working with a variety of high-profile partners and clients he designed nearly 100 buildings. His prolific output ensured that the post-war decades were defined by modernism.