Josef Hoffmanns training and career as an architect ran parallel to that of his colleague Adolf Loos from Brno. While the two men represented beacons of hope for architecture and design in fin-de-siècle Vienna, in the course of their development as artists they were to become bitter opponents over the heated debate at that time concerning ornamentation in art.
The exhibition explores the tension-charged discussion between Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann about the status of ornamentation in art and architecture. Selected furniture and glass objects, drawings, photos, and texts by and about the two influential architects illustrate points of convergence and differences in their practical design work and theoretical reflection: the one as co-founder of the Secession (1897) and the Wiener Werkstätte (1903), the other as author of the polemic Ornament und Verbrechen or Ornament and Crime (1908).
Curator Rainald Franz
Financed through the EU program Interreg III A Ö-CZ.