Starting 11 June 2020, Brno City Museum will be hosting the exhibition ADOLF LOOS, EUROPEAN: HIS LEGACY IN BRNO AND BEYOND at Špilberk Castle. This “exhibition of the year” runs until 31 December 2020, when the celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the most important figures in 20th-century architecture, Brno native Adolf Loos (1870–1933), reach their climax. The exhibition is also the first big event of the Year of Adolf Loos announced by the National Heritage Institute and the City of Prague Museum, of which Brno City Museum is an active participant.
The exhibition focuses exclusively on Adolf Loos’s activities in Moravia and his hometown of Brno. Visitors will learn about Loos’s realized and unrealized architectural designs in Brno, including the chateau belonging to Viktor Bauer today located on the Brno fairgrounds; his first Brno project, the Herold House; and his unrealized proposal for Heinrich Jordan’s “rooftop home.” Loos also worked for Viktor Bauer in nearby Hrušovany, where he designed a villa for the manager of the local sugar refinery. Loos’s imprint was also felt on Brno’s intellectual and social life through his work for Bytová kultura magazine (edited by architect and designer Jan Vaněk and theorist Bohumil Markalous) and his contacts with the local architecture scene in the 1920s (Ernst Wiesner, Jan Víšek, etc.).
The exhibition also looks at realized and unrealized projects in Brno and Olomouc designed by students of Loos’s such as Karl Hofmann, Felix Augenfeld, and Paul Engelmann.
It also recalls the less well-known work of Loos’s father, the Brno sculptor and stonemason Adolf Loos Sr., who was an important representative of local middle-class society in the 1860s and 1870s. Loos undoubtedly gained his sense for material from a childhood spent in his father’s stonemasonry workshop, which formed an important source of inspiration for his future creative endeavors.
These and other subjects are illustrated using numerous original artifacts and archival materials, some of which have never before been exhibited. Viewers are also treated to audiovisual documentaries and scale models of selected buildings.
Starting in July 2020, the Bauer Chateau on the Brno exhibition grounds will host an exhibition telling the story of Adolf Loos’s long-term client Viktor Bauer and his family. The exhibition was prepared by Lenka Štěpánková in cooperation with The Brno Architecture Manual. The chateau’s dining room is also the only surviving interior designed by Loos in his hometown, and the exhibition offers visitors a chance to view it in person.
Exhibition authors: Jindřich Chatrný, Dagmar Černoušková
Expert advisors: Pavla Cenková, Jana Kořínková, Petr Krajči, Maria Szadkowska, Tomáš Zapletal
Translation into English: Stephan von Pohl
More information about the exhibition: https://www.spilberk.cz/kalendar/evropan-adolf-loos/
The special guided tours, interesting exhibitions and other special events also include the Adolf Loos 150 programme. More information about the programme: https://www.gotobrno.cz/info/adolfloos150/.
The Brno Architecture Manual website (www.bam.brno.cz) is putting together several self-guided walking tours tracing the legacy of Adolf Loos in his native Brno, thanks to which anyone who is interested can learn more about buildings and places associated with the famous architect and with his father, the sculptor and stonemason Adolf Loos Sr. The routes will be available on the BAM website starting in July. Users can use the website to plan their own thematic walks.
All the texts at the exhibition and at www.bam.brno.cz are in both Czech and English.