Austrian born Josef Hoffmann not only completed his architectural degree under Otto Wagner, the famous head of the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts, but started his practical career by joining Wagner’s studio. He opened his own office in 1898, and became extremely interested in the linear dimension of the Glasgow School and the Mackintosh influences.
Together with Gustav Klimt and their revolutionary art nouveaux contemporaries, they founded the 'Vienna Secession', an organization intent on promoting the developing Art Nouveau genre of the period.
Constantly pushing for a renaissance of abstract arts forms and architectural purity, he founded the Wiener Werkstatte together with his two architect associates Kolman Moser and Joseph Maria Olbrich.
Hoffmann is well-known for the simple, restrained, yet visually interesting dining chairs, several intended for cafes, that he designed early in the 20th century. His "birdhouse" chair, for example, reveals his way of using a decorative feature to emphasize structure. Hoffmann worked well into his eighth decade, continuing to use the geometric motifs that would influence the Art Deco Style of the 1920s.
In 1928 his work appeared in the Art and Industry exhibition held in New York, where it exerted a strong influence on American designer Donald Desky. Hoffmann is one of the seminal figures in the modern decorative arts movement of the first half of the 20th century.
