Staud's Art Nouveau Collection: Backhausen

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As a founding member and main supplier of the Wiener Werkstätte, Backhausen was naturally found whenever a professional implementation of the artist's sketches were needed. For example, the company helped with the interior decoration of the sanatorium in Purkersdorf and Palais Stoclet in Brussels. Today Backhausen operates a Wiener Werkstätte Museum at its headquarters in Vienna's Schwarzenbergstraße. There, a portion of the total 3,500 textile patterns are on display that Backhausen has collected since the company was founded and managed to save through two world wars.

The collection, which unites about 300 mostly well-known artists, is considered to be the most comprehensive of its kind in the world. Many of the works are from designers who were active in or on the edges of the Art Nouveau, Wiener Werkstätte and Werkbund movements. Examples are the drafts by the all-round designer Koloman Moser (1868-1918); by Emil Hoppe (1876-1957), a student of Otto Wagner who made a name for himself as an architect and interior designer; by Remigius Geyling (1878-1974), for many years the head designer at the Vienna Burgtheater; and by Otto Prutscher (1880-1949), one of the leading architects of "Red Vienna" of the 1920s, who also played an important role at Wiener Werkstätten.

All motifs in Staud's Art Nouveau Collection

• ... from the Belvedere
• ... from the Kunsthistorisches Museum
• ... from the Leopold Museum
• ... from the Wien Museum
• ... from the MAK - Austrian Museum of Applied Arts
• ... from Backhausen's textile design collection
• ... from the variety of Vienna's Art Nouveau architecture
• Staud's Collection: Gustav Klimt & Viennese Art Nouveau

• www.stauds.com
• Klimt year 2012