Candlestick

Joseph Maria Olbrich was an Austrian architect and designer central to the Vienna Secession movement. Working in residential architecture, interior design, and decorative arts, he developed a distinctive vocabulary of geometric ornamentation and organic forms that rejected historical revivalism in favor of modern materials and functional clarity. His landmark Secession Building, completed in 1897, became the movement's emblematic structure. Olbrich's work across architecture, furniture, and graphic design established principles that would influence early twentieth-century modernism across Europe.

Opava, Czech Republic