The Pinakothek der Moderne is a contemporary art museum located in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, in southern Germany. The collection of the Pinakothek der Moderne continues the collection of the Neue Pinakothek, chronologically from around 1900. The spectrum of trends in works of art in the Pinakothek der Moderne is enormous, from post-impressionism and avant-garde movements of the first third of the 20th century to the digital technologies of today.

The Pinakothek der Moderne houses four independent museums at once. Placement of four museums under one roof reflects the concept of the interdisciplinary concept of the Pinakothek der Moderne. The central dome of the rotunda is the entrance to the museum and the starting point for viewing the exposition of each of the departments of the museum and additional temporary exhibitions.

PINACOTHEK DER MODERNE IN MUNICH :
from post-impressionism and avant-garde to digital technologies

painting, sculpture, design and contemporary media

The Pinakothek der Moderne contains works of art from the 20th and 21st centuries. The number of exhibits of this museum has more than 20 thousand. These are works of painting, sculpture, design and contemporary media.

The Design Museum of the Munich Pinakothek der Moderne is one of the leading design museums. Here, for the first time in the world, the entire history of the development of applied art and design, from 1900 to the present, was presented. The museum houses the largest collection of industrial design in the world.
The directions of the exhibits are very diverse - from automotive design, household items and furniture to the design of modern jewelry or computer design.

The museum building was designed by architect Stefan Braunfels in 2002. It replaced the so-called Turkish barracks that stood here before, which were no longer used. In the center of the white structure of glass and concrete is a two-story rotunda with a huge, 30 meters in diameter and 25 meters high dome. There are two wings of the building on both sides. The total area of the premises of the Pinakothek der Moderne is 12,000 square meters. This is the largest building of the museum of modern art in Europe.

Inside the building there is an art installation in the form of an egg with a chrome finish, the mount of which is located directly in the center of the domed part of the ceiling.

In the basement there is an exposition of the New Collection, the Design Museum and attracts the attention of visitors to a large, bright, illuminated stand, behind which is an exposition of automotive design of the 20th century. From this exposition we decided to start our acquaintance with the museum.

The Citroën DS is a business class car produced by the French company Citroen from 1955-1975.

The advent of the automobile was a huge cultural and political event in post-war Europe. Gina Lollobrigida advertised it on the front page of the October issue of Paris Match. Roland Barthes devoted an entire chapter to it in his collection of philosophical essays. Without wheels, in the form of a rocket directed upwards, the car was shown at the Milan Design Triennale (Triennale di Milano) in 1957. In the future, he repeatedly appeared on the pages of magazines and newspapers, and in articles on various topics, from political and secular to sports, he starred in many films.

Breuer Marcel is an American architect and designer of Hungarian origin, one of the founders of industrial design, a leader of functionalism. Marcel Breuer can be regarded as one of the most significant and influential designers of the 20th century.

Chair B11, 1926/27

Armchairs, chairs and stools by Marcel Breuer made of smoothly curved steel tubes have become the hallmark of the Bauhaus style. These items were washable, economical, they emphasized the constructive side.
Samples of Breuer's tubular furniture, being released in millions of copies, have long taken a stable place among the classics of modernism and for a long time determined the style of furniture all over the world.

Chair B3 "Vasiliy", 1925/26

While still a student at the Bauhaus, he was fascinated by modernist experimentation with furniture design. After graduating from the Bauhaus (1924), he worked in one of its workshops as a painter and sculptor. In 1925, Marcel Breuer created the first steel tube chair. Inspired by the handlebars of his bicycle, Breuer was the first to use steel tubes in furniture production.

This chair, called "Wasiliy" in honor of Wassily Kandinsky, who taught at the Bauhaus in those years, became one of Breuer's famous works. The chair is currently manufactured by Cassina.

Constructivist chair, 1922

Bedside table, dressing table, stool
and mirrors, 1925/26

Writing desk, 1925

Lena Bergner expressed the idea that architecture is a whole, and that textile design is a fundamental part of that whole: in a world built by folk industries - the architectural structures and urban networks that make up the built environment - people feel at home in the world through artifacts that allow them to make such structures their own.

Patterns for knitted carpets, 1927

According to Bergner, textiles have an impact on building inhabitants.
In fabric used for furniture, the color of the upholstery is determined in conjunction with the intended position of the piece of furniture, creating virtual states of coolness or warmth.

Fabrics for workrooms, in her opinion, should be different from fabrics for rest rooms. Thinking about the use of fabrics opens up a range of considerations that are relevant to the most modest and most luxurious contexts.

Otto Linding was a German sculptor and ceramist. Linding is known for its modernist and elegant design ceramic tea and coffee sets, such as the L12 coffee cup.

Linding studied ceramics and sculpture at various art schools in Germany from 1909-1918, and also as an apprentice to the sculptor Max Bechstein. In 1919, Linding studied to be a sculptor at the Bauhaus school in Weimar, but in 1920 he changed his profession and began working as an apprentice potter in the pottery department of the Bauhaus school in Dornburg.

Coffee pot L-15, 1923
⦁ Kettle, 1924
⦁ Cream bowl, 1923

The Kaiser Idell collection has its origins in the Bauhaus school. Its creator, jeweler and designer Christian Dell, has been actively involved in the activities of the Bauhaus since the 1920s.
Kaiser Idell lamps were created by Dell in the early 1930s specifically for Gebr. Kaiser & Co. Their title is a play on the author's surname and the German word idee (idea). The main innovative feature is the articulated device, which allows you to easily change the direction of lighting.

Double table lamp № 6580, 1934

This lamp determined the handwriting of the master: sober, rational, without any ornateness. Simple forms and natural colors Wagenfeld, as he himself said, peeped from nature.

What his colleagues at the Bauhaus created, the pioneer of industrial design, sometimes seemed too far-fetched and formalistic, not suitable for everyday use.
Wagenfeld perfectly combined aesthetics and functionality, thus realizing his design credo.

Connoisseurs of 20th century design value Rietveld for the qualitative transition from handicraft to conceptual design. He came up with furniture that was an order of magnitude simpler and more modest than all the items contemporary to him. Rietveld took pleasure in simplifying, reducing, and saving.

All of his early design experience was accumulated in a wooden chair made in the summer of 1918 from seven rails, six posts, two braces and two boards. The designer set himself the goal of making an object without mass and without volume, which would "not contain space, but allow space to flow freely."

The item was absolutely revolutionary and technically so advanced that since its inception, designers have been striving to achieve the same goal.
The original armchair became the subject of a publication in De Stijl, a magazine founded by the Dutch artist and critic Theo van Doesburg. Seven years later, Rietveld painted this chair red, blue, black and yellow. The coloring has been interpreted as a homage to the Dutch modernist artist Piet Mondrian, the most famous member of the De Stijl group, named after the magazine of the same name, but there is no documentary evidence that Rietveld thought this way.

Chair Zigzag, 1932-1933

280 ZIG ZAG
Currently produced by the factory Cassina, collection I Maestri.
Designed by Rietveld in 1934, this chair replaces the usual sequence of leg-backs and seats with a single leaf of wood in an inverted
Z shape. It was also one of the first examples of a cantilevered seat. The dovetail joints, visible from the rear between seat and backrest, show the quality of the carpentry.

Sideboard, 1919

Armchair, 1924

Armchair, 1919

Charles Rennie Mackintosh is the creator of the famous Glasgow style, the most striking figure in British architecture at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Like many masters of the Art Nouveau era, he was a universal artist, an apologist for the synthesis of arts.
In addition to architectural design, he designed furniture, worked with metal and textiles, made stained-glass windows and decorative panels, was a painter and graphic artist, that is, a real Master, creating a stylistically unified human environment.

The legacy of the Macintosh is large and varied. Surprisingly, almost all areas of his work had a huge impact on the development of world design, and to this day his work is relevant and constantly copied. Apparently, this is due to the fact that Mackintosh managed to create his own style - easily recognizable and impeccably elegant. His work, anticipating several trends in the art of the 20th century at once, still remains an example of a combination of functional rationalism and elegance.

The name of the famous interior lounge chair LC4 is encrypted with the initials of the great architect Le Corbusier. However, French designers Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Jeanneret also took an active part in the creation of the cult item, the latter being the cousin of the famous Swiss.

The deck chair, along with other representatives of the LC series, was designed in 1928 for the Villa Church by Le Corbusier (Ville d'Avray, France, 1927). A year later, after being shown at the Salon d'Autumne exhibition in Paris at the Home Equipment stand, the couch, called the "machine for relaxation" (machine à repos), became famous all over the world.
Innovative Design: infinitely adjustable chaise longue.

The frame of the couch is made by seamless welding. The basis for a mattress made of genuine leather, spotted cow or pony skin is a grid of tightly stretched ribbons.
The modernist rounded design of the LC4 allows the user to fix it in the desired position: the top of the couch accepts almost any slope. The object obeys the main principle of pure functional design - ergonomics, the furniture serves as an extension of the human body.

Wright's fame came from Prairie Houses, which he designed from 1900 to 1917. "Houses of the Prairie" was created within the framework of the concept of organic architecture, the ideal of which is integrity and unity with nature.
They are characterized by an open layout, horizontal lines prevailing in the composition, roof slopes far beyond the house, terraces, finishing with raw natural materials, rhythmic articulation of the facade with frames, the prototype of which was Japanese temples.

Chair, 1903

Wright paid special attention to the interiors of the houses, designing the furniture himself and ensuring that each element made sense and organically fit into the environment he created.
True to its motto "Every chair must be designed for the building in which it will be used".

There was a certain difference between the tendencies in the art of Germany and France. Although the French adopted materials such as steel tubes and plate glass, they used them with more subtlety and elegance than the Germans.

The Frenchman Pierre Chareau created surprisingly harmonious, attractive, both from an aesthetic and functional point of view, objects. The peak of his career was in the 20-30s of the last century. In his works, Pierre Chareau skillfully combines wood, often exotic species, with metal, experiments with glass. In furniture and lamps designed by Sharo over the years, we see a transition from art deco to modernism.

The most famous work of the architect and decorator Camille Chareau is a glass house in Paris, on which he worked with the Dutch architect Beivut. Chareau's glass house, like Le Corbusier's Villa Savoy, was built in the short period between the two world wars, at the culmination of classical modernism.

The normal is the enemy of the genius. The house was formed by the restrictions of the site: the new building was, as it were, inscribed in the contour of the old building, while the top floor was untouched.

German architect and designer, one of the brightest representatives of the Bauhaus school.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is a famous American architect with German roots. He was one of the founders of the international style in architecture, which is characterized by strict geometric shapes. The creativity of the architect strives for maximum simplicity. His works are distinguished by pronounced vertical and horizontal lines and well-defined proportions.
The architect's favorite materials are steel and glass.

The German modernist architect who headed the Bauhaus school from 1930 to 1933 patented his version of the steel tube chair (model MR 20) in 1927. The very idea of a cantilever chair, which has only two legs instead of four, belonged to the Dutch architect and designer Mart Stam.

But Stam's cantilever chairs had a straight, angular frame with fittings, and Mies van der Rohe offered his own solution with a single, elegant semicircular silhouette that served as a springy element and corresponded to the weight of the human body.

Chair MR 20, 1927

Steel was seen by designers as the best embodiment of the industrial age. Thin steel bases were almost transparent and did not interfere with the perception of space.

But the idea of a cantilever chair was new at the time, and the history of its development is not without competition and drama.
Breuer also launched his own version of the cantilever chair into mass production. In it, he optimized the design of Stam, making it more technological and ergonomic. Despite these advantages, Breuer's chair did not differ much in appearance from Stam's chair.
Breuer's business manager, an experienced lawyer, Anton Lorenz, realized that the idea of a cantilever chair was a gold mine, and in 1928 acquired the rights to the Stam chair, after which he sued anyone who tried to imitate it.

Stam's console design was so simple that it was almost impossible to improve it. Having bought the rights to it, Lorenz unknowingly forced designers to create their own versions of cantilever chairs and provoked the emergence of a huge variety of metal cantilever structures, often more complex than Mart Stam's original solution.

MARTINUS STAM _ Metal Chair, 1927

LUDWIG MIES van der Rohe _ chair 533, 1927

MARCEL BREUER _ chair В 55, 1928/29

Erich Dieckmann is a German furniture designer. A bright representative of the Bauhaus school.
After finishing school at the Bauhaus, he moved to Dessau (1925). From 1925 to 1930 he headed a carpentry workshop in Weimar. Since 1931, Erich Dieckmann has been head of the carpentry workshop.

Erich Dieckmann was one of the most important furniture designers at the Bauhaus school. Like Marcel Breuer, Erich Dieckmann experimented with steel tubes but is primarily known for his standardized wooden furniture.
Diekmann's furniture designs are strictly geometric, based on right angles, and a characteristic feature of Diekmann's products is the connection of armrests and chair legs into a single design.

Two-piece kitchen set, circa 1928

Ernst Gamperl (born 1965) German designer. Born in Munich, after graduating from school he studied carpentry on his own. In 1990 he opened his own workshop specializing in wood objects. He designed a collection of wooden tableware and vases for Driade.

He is the recipient of prestigious German design awards, including the Bavarian State Award, the Hessian State Award and the Danner Award. His work is displayed in the permanent collections of the Museum of Applied Arts (Museum für Angewandte Kunst) in Hamburg, the Kestner Museum (Kestnermuseum) in Hannover and the Museum of Decorative Arts (Museé des Arts Décoratifs) in Lausanne.

Oak wood vases _ 2002

In 1958 he began working with the glassworks Gino Cenedese (then Ars Cenedese Murano). Under his artistic direction, the factory has developed various decorative lines of modern design.

In later years, using the technique of scavo glass (a special glass finish similar to glass found in archaeological excavations), an important decorative line was introduced in various new works of the master.
His latest works have been a return to the traditional techniques of hand-blown Murano glass, but reimagined in a contemporary context.

Glass vases _ 1959

Walter A. Heufelder is undoubtedly an exceptional ceramist and artist. He shows his qualities not only in the field of vascular ceramics, but also in the field of sculpture.
As a practitioner, Heufelder is impressive in that he masters almost all methods of working and processing various ceramic materials in high quality.

In the last 10 years, his work has focused on expressive sculptural work in the form of "steles" and "roles" that he provides to characters from different ancient cultures.

Stella _ 1985

ceramic sculpture
+ iron oxide glaze

Charlotte Perriand (24/10/1903 – 27/10/1999) was a French modernist, architect, designer, photographer, collagist and author of fascinating memoirs. She lived for 96 years and, by right, was considered a participant in the events associated with the formation and development of European modernism.

Charlotte Perriand was 24 years old when she joined Le Corbusier's architectural studio. In the same room of the old monastery at 35 rue du Sevres. According to legend, Corbusier looked at her sketches and said that they did not embroider pillows. Perriand left, and the next day Le Corbusier saw an exhibition of her designs and asked to come back himself. All this was in 1927, after which the three of them (Le Corbusier, his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, who became Charlotte's lover, and herself) worked fruitfully together for ten years. The three of them designed the iconic furniture of the twentieth century - objects made of bent steel tubes - minimalist and incredibly avant-garde.

Bookcase for "Mexican House", 1953.

folding chair, 1953.

Cassina has the exclusive rights to produce Charlotte Perriand pieces.

According to Jean Prouvé, "what was created for centuries can become a relic of the past, and what was created for one generation will live for more than one century."
The French designer, self-taught architect and engineer Jean Prouvé (1901–1984) became famous for his simple steel and aluminum structures: prefabricated houses, tables, shelving and chairs. He considered himself primarily an engineer.
His things are recognized by the characteristic circles - decorative holes in the structures. Prouvé's work is dedicated to a whole room in the Center Pompidou. His name is on the lips of collectors; Today, several Parisian galleries are promoting the fashion for his "orphan" furniture.

Prefabricated houses and furniture, ultra-light ornamental structures of hinged facades, furniture made of bent plywood and twisted steel - today all this, for sure, does not cause us any surprise. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, Jean Prouvé became a real innovator in industrial design, giving impetus to the formation of the high-tech style.

In 2001, Vitra acquired the rights to reproduce Prouvé furniture. In 2011, the first series of reissues was released, and in 2015, the legendary office furniture of the master was released again.

Famous American designer of the first generation, generally recognized as the "King of Industrial Design". One of the organizers of the Society of Industrial Designers of America.
In 1927 he created a design bureau. One of the few who started the era of commercial design, gravitating towards styling, but distinguished by its delicate taste and high consumer qualities.

He also collaborated with the largest American corporations, such as Ford, United States Style, DuPont, Westinghouse, designing a wide variety of products in the 50s - from optical instruments to glassware packaging. Teague was responsible for the design of the Polaroid camera housing (1948).

Radio "Nocturne" _ 1936

In 1950-1960. of the last century, many countries both in Europe and beyond have experienced rapid economic recovery. Many new firms entered the market and a range of new products competed with each other for customers.
Products such as typewriters or cameras have been designed and produced in wider variations for increasingly well-defined user groups.

As the electrical grids became more powerful, the growing number of mechanical devices was joined by numerous electrical devices, which all the time fought for their position in the market. From electric shavers through electric mixers and fans to portable radios, they are making their way into more and more areas of everyday life.

Whether mechanical or electrical, each of these products brought a new sound with them.
You can get acquainted with the "new sounds" in more detail in the "Sound of Design" application at https://sound-of-design.de/, where you can enjoy a rather interesting musical mix of sounds and music of a certain historical era, combining sounds electrical appliances that stand out for their innovative design and sounds typical of this era.

FANS _ QL-1 and HL-1 _ 1960s

RADIO Toot-a-loop, R-72S_ 1960s

CAMERA Polaroid Mod.95 _ 1940s

MIXER_BOSCH-HM/Q1/220/A1_ 1950s

PHONE_Siemens & Halske AG _ 1950s

SLIDE PROJECTOR_Kodak AG _ 1950s

PRINTING (left) and COMPUTING machines _ 1950s

In 1966, Ingo Maurer created the legendary Bulb, a light bulb shaped like an incandescent bulb with an incandescent bulb inside. It was so simple and original that the model immediately got into the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In 1985, at the Center Georges Pompidou, at the exhibition "Lamps, I think of you", the master showed the installation "YaYaHo" made of wires and halogens.

In the 1980s, Ingo Maurer and his team were the first to experiment with creating not just lamps, but entire lighting systems. In 1984, their innovative development YaYaHo saw the light of day, consisting of interchangeable horizontal (and sometimes vertical) elements with halogen bulbs. The system was a phenomenal success, and Maurer was invited to create similar lighting systems for the exhibition Lumieres je pense a vous at the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Institute of French Architecture in Paris, the Villa Medici in Rome.

YaYaHo _ 1984

Maurer was called the "poet of light", he really knew how to give a purely functional lighting fixtures the status of art objects. But he did it with great humour. His designs were often ironic and self-deprecating, like the famous "Porca Miseria" chandelier from 1994, which seemed to imitate an explosion in a china shop in slow motion. His non-conformism was kind and cheerful. "I love to entertain and amuse people," he said.

PORCA MISERIA _ 1994

The designer adored "frivolous" images, while designing the most complex high-tech lighting systems. And he taught to choose not a lamp, but the light emitted by it. "34 butterflies made of black or white paper "Munken Lynx" and one red dragonfly ...".
The paper manufacturer is the Polish-Swedish company Arctic Paper. Other construction materials: steel, porcelain, glass. Light source: LED module with warm white emission.
The lamps "La Festa delle Farfalle" ("Feast of the Butterflies") look very gentle and romantic.

La Festa delle Farfalle _ 2019

Lamp "Luzy Take Five", 2018. Made from a working rubber glove and light bulbs. Designed to give an industrial appeal to a home or office setting, frosted light bulbs hanging from flexible fingertips are lights that the ordinary mind could not imagine.

These glove-shaped lighting fixtures are designed to shed light either with the index finger or with the whole hand.
Looking at these lamps, we can say that the light bulbs are silently leading their revolution along with other lamps. Dissatisfied with their ordinary lives and limited features, they are now finding innovative ways to light up with vibrant designs.

Lamp LUZY TAKE FIVE _ 2018

"Golden Ribbon" - a luxurious "Golden Ribbon" - was invented by Ingo Maurer in 1994 for an exhibition in Tel Aviv, then others appeared. Each of the specimens is unique, has its own dimensions and relief.

GOLDEN RIBBON _ 1990/2019

The most original concept of "Light Cone" - lighting without a lamp: just funnels in the ceiling,
through which light flows. Or "Flying Flames" - flickering candles.

FLYING FLAMES _ 2013

In recent years, Maurer has worked extensively with Japanese rice paper and created lamps inspired by Japanese culture and art, and in particular the paper lantern tradition. In this he was close to another master, Isamu Noguchi (Isamu Noguchi), and in many respects drew inspiration from his "light sculptures" Akari Light Sculptures.

The paper lampshades were created in collaboration with designer Dagmar Mombach in her studio, and the lamps themselves were called MaMoNouchies (an acronym for Maurer, Mombach and Noguchi).

Ingo Maurer surprised with creativity and innovation, and not just playing with form. Also very unusual at the exposition was the Hallucination Lamp, the technology of holograms is not new, but in its embodiment: the effect of an empty lampshade, in which a completely voluminous and completely wireless light bulb appears at a certain angle, is absolutely magical.

Lamp "Hallucination"