Armchair Koller by Josef Hoffmann, 1927

Hoffmann, Josef (Franz Maria)

Austrian architect, designer and draughtsman
(b Pirnitz, Moravia [now Brtnice, Czech Republic], 15 Dec 1870; d Vienna, 15 May 1956).
Josef Hoffman was born in Pirnitz, Moravia (now Chechoslovakia) in 1870. He studied
architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Carl von Hasenauer and Otto
Wagner, whose theories of a functional, modern architecture profoundly effected his
architectural works. He won the Rome prize in 1895 and the following year joined the
Wagner's office. Hoffman established his own office in 1898 and taught at the Vienna
Kunstgewerbeschule from 1899 until 1936. He was a founding member of the Vienna
Secession, a group of revolutionary artists and architects. He actively supported the
group by designing its exhibitions and writing for the magazine Ver Sacrum. In 1903 he
helped found the Wiener Werkstate. Although Hoffman's earliest works belong to a
Secessionist tangent of the Art Nouveau, his later works introduced a vocabulary of
regular grids and squares. The functional clarity and abstract purity of his later works
mark him as an important precursor of the Modern Movement. A highly individualistic
architect and designer, Hoffman's work combined the simplicity of craft production with
a refined aesthetic ornament. He died in Vienna in 1956.