Dagobert Peche at Modern Art & Design

Dagobert Peche

Few designers have been as influential and multifaceted within the fields of applied arts in the early decades of the 20th century as the Austrian Dagobert Peche and his colleagues at Wiener Werkstätte. Born in St. Michael im Lungau, Salzburg in 1887, Peche began his studies at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna in 1906 before transferring to the Akademie der bildenden Künste in 1908. At a birthday celebration for architect colleague Otto Wagner, Peche met Josef Hoffmann – one of the founders of the influential firm Wiener Werkstätte as well as a central figure in the Austrian radical artist and architect group the Wiener Secession. The meeting bore fruit and soon Peche was engaged at the Wiener Werkstätte to design textiles and wallpaper. He also showed ability in other fields and began contributing designs for furniture, glass, jewelry, toys, and other objects. Peche became the artistic director of the Wiener Werkstätte in the spring of 1915, after the outbreak of the First World War. During the war he managed the company's branch in Zurich and later returned to Vienna at the end of 1919.

For this spring's live auction Modern Art & Design, Bukowskis proudly presents a magnificent mirror designed by Dagobert Peche, executed by frame maker Max Welz in Vienna for the Wiener Werkstätte ca. 1922. An important model in Peche's artistic oeuvre, on display at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1925, the present mirror ought to be regarded as one of the foremost examples of his graceful and richly ornamented style.