The exhibition, prepared by the Museum of Decorative Arts, Vienna (MAK) in conjunction with the Moravian Gallery in Brno, present objects, drawings, written records and photographs of works by two major exponents of the 20th-century architecture.
At the same time, it reveals the influence of Hoffmann's design
and constructins on Carlo Scarpa's works. Early on, the Italian
architect Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978) was impressed, aside from Frank
Lloyd Wright, by the Vienna Secession Movement, notably by Josef
Hoffmann. Over decades, subtle traces of his studies of solutions
to space and area design problems proposed by Hoffmann can be
detected in Scarpa's work. 2006 brings the 50th anniversary of
Hoffmann's death and the 100th anniversary of Scarpa's birth. In
this anniversarial year, the MAK exhibition "JOSEF HOFFMANN-CARLO
SCARPA. On the Sublime in Architecture" at the Josef Hoffmann
Museum, Brtnice, for the first time explores the influence of Josef
Hoffmann's (1870-1956) designs and buildings on the oeuvre of Carlo
Scarpa (1906-1978), a relationship hitherto only vaguely indicated
in architectural-history research. The exhibition elucidates the
creative inspiration that Scarpa took from Hoffmann in terms of
objects, drawings, written sources, and photographs of the major
works of those two important exponents of twentieth-century
architecture. All exhibits come from the MAK collection.
Museum of Decorative Arts, Vienna
(MAK)
