60s Wassily chair in canvas by Marcel Breuer, made by Gavina

Wassily chair designed by Marcel Breuer, circa 1925. Manufactured circa 1960 by Gavina, Italy. Made in off-white canvas with chromed tubular steel frame.

Wonderful vintage all original condition with age related patina. The model for this chair is the traditional overstuffed club chair, but all that remains is its mere outline, an elegant composition traced in gleaming steel.

The canvas seat, back, and arms seem to float in space; the body of the sitter does not touch the steel framework. Breuer spoke of the chair as his “most extreme work . . . the least artistic, the most logical, the least ‘cozy’ and the most mechanical.”

It was also his most influential piece of design, taking furniture in a radical new direction. Breuer had designed an earlier version in 1925, while teaching at the Bauhaus, the influential German school of modern art, architecture, and design in Dessau, and within a year designers everywhere were experimenting with tubular steel. Breuer claimed to have drawn inspiration from the tubular-steel handlebars of his bicycle, which were strong, lightweight, and mass-produced.

He reasoned that if the material could be bent into handlebars, it could be bent into forms for furniture. The chair was dubbed the “Wassily” after the painter Vasily (or Wassily) Kandinsky, Breuer’s friend and fellow Bauhaus instructor, who had praised the design when it was first produced. – from MOMA.

Inspired by the frame of a bicycle and influenced by the constructivist theories of the De Stjil movement, Marcel Breuer was still an apprentice at the Bauhaus when he reduced the classic club chair to its elemental lines and planes, forever changing the course of furniture design. – from Knoll.

We bought this chair from the first owner who bought this chair in the sixties in France.

The canvas is still in very good condition except from wear on the right arm. Off course the age is showing but is as can be expected from a chair of this age.

Measurements: Height 73 cm, Width: 78 cm, Depth: 65 cm, Seat Height: 42 cm