Pressemitteilungen

Torsten Bröhan on the research project about Kálmán Lengyel, Marcel Breuer and the development of modern tubular steel furniture

The collector and design historian Torsten Bröhan acquired some documents, photographs and objects from Kálmán Lengyel’s environment in 2016. This material formed the starting point for extensive research in which traces of the designer’s life and work have been collected since 2017.

Kálmán Lengyel was born in Szeged in 1900 and lived in Berlin, Paris and Budapest. He comes from an upper-middle-class Jewish family that has been involved in furniture manufacturing for generations. His father’s company received awards at the Paris World Exhibition. In the 1920s, Lengyel pursued various architectural projects in Berlin and founded the company Standard Möbel  in 1927 together with Marcel Breuer and promoted his own furniture brand Ka-Le-Möbel. He worked as an interior designer in Paris and built in Szeged and Budapest. His style consistently combines clarity and homeliness in the sense of applied modernity. In December 1944, Kálmán Lengyel was deported to Germany as a Jew and died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

The Bröhan Design Foundation is attempting to present this important designer in his connection to the Bauhaus and modern architecture and to make his work as a furniture designer and interior designer visible again in a publication.

The planned book, which is scheduled to be published in 2023, is based on an extensive, long-term search and research in archives and collections and is based on the acquired and tracked down estate items, documents and photographs. The reconstruction of Kálmán Lengyel’s life and work, his work with Marcel Breuer and Anton Lorenz, the history of the Standard Möbel company, the beginnings of tubular steel furniture production, a place in the modern network of Berlin, Paris and Budapest – the upcoming publication about Kálmán Lengyel , Marcel Breuer and the pioneering period of tubular steel furniture will provide a new look at this formative era.
The Kálmán Lengyel website