UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER
Villa Primavesi in Winkelsdorf
Silver gelatin deduction/paper, 27.5 x 38 cm
verso inscribed Villa Primavesi in Winkelsdorf, erbaut von Josef Hoffmann, Bauleiter: Architekt, Wilh. Jonasch 1912 - 1914
provenance: Carla Hoffmann, private collection Vienna
ESTIMATE #Euro 50 - 100
STARTING PRICE #Euro 50
Josef Hoffmann, a student of Carl Hasenauer and Otto Wagner, was one of the central figures of Viennese Modernism as an architect and designer. Among others, he created representative residences for Carl Moll, Koloman Moser, Sigmund Berl, Eduard Ast, Sonja and Anton Knips, Robert Primavesi and his partner Josefine Skywa and his cousin Otto Primavesi. The Primavesis were a banker and industrialist dynasty in Olomouc, whom Hoffmann had met through the mediation of the sculptor Anton Hanak in connection with the 1911 International Art Exhibition in Rome, for which he had built the Austrian pavilion. For Otto and Eugenia Primavesi, close friends of Gustav Klimt, Hoffmann furnished a few rooms in their Olomouc townhouse and built a bank house in Olomouc as well as a villa in the Moravian village of Winkelsdorf (Kouty nad Desnou) in 1913/4. Hoffmann also designed the furnishings for the Winkelsdorf villa. The villa burned down in 1922. Commissioned by Robert Primavesi, Hoffmann adapted an older country house for Primavesi's partner Josefine Skywa and built the Skywa-Primavesi villa in Vienna-Hietzing from 1913 to 1915. In 1903 Hoffmann founded the Wiener Werkstaette with Koloman Moser and industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer, modeled on the British Arts and Crafts Movement and influenced by Viennese Art Nouveau. Hoffmann remained one of the most important designers of the WW until its bankruptcy in 1932. The Wiener Werkstaette aimed to unite the entire spheres of human life in design, in the sense of a Gesamtkunstwerk. Josef Hoffmann's acquaintance with Berta Zuckerkandl led to the first major commission: the Purkersdorf Sanatorium, planned by Viktor Zuckerkandl, Berta's brother-in-law, west of Vienna. Among the WW staff were about a dozen women who were crucial to the change in style from Art Nouveau to Art Deco in the 1920s, such as Vally Wieselthier, Gudrun Baudisch, Reni Schaschl, Hilda Jesser, and Susi Singer. Together with Stefan Rath, the head of the glass manufacturer Lobmeyr, Josef Hoffmann founded the oesterreichischer Werkbund (oeWB) in 1912. Hoffmann designed numerous glasses and chandeliers for Lobmeyr, some of which are still produced by Lobmeyr today. Josef Hoffmann survived the Nazi era unscathed despite hostility from the Nazi architectural ideologist Paul Schmitthenner. He was commissioned by the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts to further develop the Vienna Arts and Crafts Association (a Nazi successor organization to the Austrian Werkbund) as its artistic director. To this end, an "artistic experimental institute" was founded in 1941, where young artisans could further their education under Hoffmann's guidance. After the war, in 1948, Hoffmann founded the oesterreichische Werkstaetten as the successor to the Wiener Werkstaette und Werkbund (oeWB). Hoffmann's tombstone was designed by Fritz Wotruba.
PLEASE NOTE:
The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights. In the case of normal taxation (marked #), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax of 13%, for photographys 20%, is added to the sum of the highest bid and the buyer's premium.
The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.