Josef Hoffmann, 1870–1956: In the Realm of Beauty

Before aesthete, designer, and architect Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956) came along, Austrian architecture and design was suffocating under a surfeit of opulent ornamentation and bombastic flourish. With his radical new approach and a band of like-minded figures, Hoffmann was a founding father of the Viennese Secession and Wiener Werkstätte, and revolutionized Western aesthetics with a brave new minimalism. A trained architect, Hoffmann lived his life as an extreme aesthete, while also cultivating his image as a bon viveur, a lover of women, a snappy dresser, and a provocative thinker. Gifted with a questing intellect, he continually challenged received orthodoxies and pushed for purer design in buildings and furniture, glass and metalwork.