Guided tour - Josef Hoffman

Meet architect, designer, scenographer and teacher Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956). Through his oeuvre, you wander through some 60 years of European history.

Hoffmann, as a young twenty-something, settles in the fast industrialising and expanding city of Vienna, the intellectual centre of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The city is quickly shedding its medieval skin and Hoffmann too is setting his sights on the future, rather than rehashing and repeating examples he learnt in school. Under the approving eye of his mentor Otto Wagner, Hoffmann emerges as one of the leading figures of the Vienna Secession. In 1903, he co-founds the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops): a production cooperative operating on the central idea that there is no hierarchical distinction between the fine and decorative arts.

The exhibition is divided into six chronological chapters, each with a scale model of an iconic Hoffmann-building as focal point, one of the most remarkable and famous realisations being the Stocklet palace. This bourgeois home for the Brussels banking family Stoclet on the Avenue Tervueren is a Wiener Werkstätte tour de force and one of the few remaining buildings that testify to the philosophy of the Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) in which the design is thought of as a whole, right down to the flatware. The resulting harmony is beautiful and consequently contributes to the quality of life and personal development of the residents.

Let yourself be seduced by Josef Hoffmann, key figure of Viennese modernism. A man imbued at all times with an unconditional penchant for beauty. After all: beauty automatically flows from pure forms and high-quality materials, and a person - and by extension a community - that surrounds itself with beauty can do more.

On Saturdays
14 & 28.10.23
4 & 18.11.23
2 & 16.12.23
13 & 27.01.24
10 & 24.02.24
9 & 23.03.24

From 15:00 to 16:30

20 € / 8 (-19 years & Museumpass)

Meeting point – reception desk A&H Museum

Need more information? Ask your questions on public@kmkg-mrah.be