At first glance, there seems to be little linking the work of American minimal artist Donald Judd (1928–1994) and that of Austrian architect and designer Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956). However, when investigating both their positions at a practical, formal and theoretical level, baffling correspondences emerge as regards the consistent development of formal reduction in design, the architectural approach, the “interplay” of volumes and surfaces. The ideal aspiration of a holistic life design, bringing art, architecture and life as such into harmonious correspondence, is manifest both in the work of Donald Judd and that of Josef Hoffmann. In its structively oriented approach, Judd’s work connects with Hoffmann’s creations, as it was Hoffmann whose stringent designs enshrined geometrics and tectonics not only in the architecture, but also in the design of modernist Vienna.

Curator Rainald Franz
Co-Curator Sebastian Hackenschmidt, MAK Curator Furniture and Woodworks