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The Barcelona chair was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich (his partner and the only woman invited to teach at the Bauhaus school) for the German pavilion at the Barcelona Universal Exposition of 1929, also designed by Mies van der Rohe

Barcelona chair is an icon of industrial design, the 'modern movement' and design in general. With its elegant simplicity, the famous motto of Mies van der Rohe 'less is more' was born.

Conceived for 'a king's rest' according to the same creator and to welcome the Spanish royals visiting the Exposition in '29, it is a reinterpretation and reference to the 'curule seat', a folding, saddle-shaped Etruscan stool introduced into ancient Rome, with four curved legs crossed in an X shape.
The inspiration and cultural reference to an ancient civilisation along with the simplicity and purity of form confer the Barcelona chair with a timeless charm, as attested by its success and uninterrupted production from 1930 to today. 

The armchair presented in this auction was acquired from a house in the province of Siena where it has been carefully preserved for over forty years. In fact, the chair remains in excellent condition to this day. The frame has been polished and now looks very good, the upholstery is still perfectly solid and the leather upholstery treated with nourishing products is perfectly intact, without any abrasion and with only very minor signs of age. 
The covers are in original Knoll branded fabric and there is a Knoll International label on the frame, as shown in the photos. 
Undoubtedly a high quality period piece in very good condition.  

Armchair dimensions: height 76 cm, width 77 cm, depth 77 cm, seat height 44 cm.


'Design Radicale' includes insured shipping to Italy and Europe, shipping costs as shown.
For shipping to the rest of the world, the cost is approximate. We will provide a quote when the auction is finished, depending on the destination.

L. Mies Van Der Rohe was born in 1886 in Aachen and died in 1969 in Chicago. For 4 years, he designed stucco and ornaments in workshops and studies in Aachen. From 1904 to 1907, he worked with Bruno Paul, and simultaneously studied at the 'Kunstgewerbeschule' (applied arts). From 1908 to 1911, he worked in the architecture studio of Peter Beherens, where he met Le Corbusier and Gropius and studied the neoclassical architecture of K. F. Schinkel, which decidedly influenced his early works.
In 1911, he left Beherens, and in 1912, in the Netherlands, he met H. P. Berlage.
The war interrupted his activities while constituting a pause for reflection and the elaboration of a personal poetry: the relationships Mies had with the figurative vanguard, from De Stijl to Expressionism to Dadaism, in fact, date to these years. Mies was part of the Novembergruppe, founded in 1918, and directed its architectural section from 1921 to 1925. He simultaneously worked as an architect in Berlin. During this period, he drew up plans for steel and glass skyscrapers (1919 and 1920/21) and for brick and reinforced concrete country houses (1923/24) in Berlin; in Berlin, too, he created the monument to K. Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (1926), which clearly had an expressionistic inspiration.
From 1926 to 1932, Mies was vice president of Deutscher Werkbund, for which he organised important exhibitions, including a memorable one in the experimental district of Weissenhoff in Stuttgart in 1927.
In 1929, he created the German pavilion at the Barcelona International Exposition. At the pavilion in Barcelona, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe presented the vocabulary of architecture in a poetic way, extolling its possibilities. The wall in reddish marble and shiny onyx, which stretch out under the flat and suspended roof, become abstract expressive surfaces. The play of light reflections on the smooth stones, on the metal surfaces, on the chrome-plated steel pillars spills over two horizontal water basins. The internal and external space intertwine in harmony. Built as a provisional building for the International Exposition, the pavilion soon became famous for the clarity of its rationalism. After its reconstruction, the superior rhythm of its spaces induces meditation, in a pure architecture, freed from any utilitarian purpose.
From August 1930, appointed by Gropius, he was director of the Bauhaus, where he also taught architecture to students in their final semesters, a role he held until 1933, when he was forced to close the school under pressure from the Nazis.
In 1937, he immigrated to Chicago, where from 1938 to 1958 he directed the architecture section at the Armour Institute (later the Illinois Institute of Technology - IIT).
A great exhibition dedicated to him in 1947 by the Museum of Modern Art in New York was the definitive consecration of his fame. Particularly numerous are the works from the American period (Chicago and especially New York), which strongly influenced the architecture of the 1900s. Among these, memorable is the Farnsworth House (Plan/Illinois 1946-1951), and the towers at the apartments at 860-880 Lake Share Drive (Chicago, 1948-1951), the Seagram Building (New York, 1956-1959) and the Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin, 1962-1967).

U.S. - 1970-1979 - Leather, Steel

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - Knoll International - Armchair - Barcelona chair

Design & Contemporary Furniture

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Closing date

Tuesday

22 November

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Period

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Design & Contemporary Furniture

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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - Knoll International - Armchair - Barcelona chair

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