Jacques & Jacqueline Groag: Architect & Designer

Isokon Gallery, London

Jacques Groag, architect and furniture designer, and Jacqueline Groag, textile and pattern designer, were two celebrated residents of the Isokon in the 1940s and early 1950s, yet due to split residence between three countries, which often did not communicate with each other in the 20th century, the tremendous scope of work of these second-wave Viennese Modernists has only recently become known.

This exhibition covers their individual careers in Vienna and Czechoslovakia, their lives as Jewish émigrés to London, their collaborations, and the couple’s unique contributions in Britain to postwar exhibitions, monuments, furniture and textile design. The Isokon exhibition describes the Groags’ remarkable range of contacts that included Josef Hoffman, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Adolf Loos and Trude Fleischmann, while the display is copiously illustrated with many of their pre- and post-war works including commissions ranging from the Austrian Werkbundsiedlung, to the Festival of Britain, Gordon Russell, Swan & Edgar, Heal’s, Colibri and Schiaparelli. Jacqueline, some of whose original textiles are on show, even created the fabric for a dress worn by the future Elizabeth II.

The book Two Hidden Figures of the Viennese Modern Movement by Ursula Prokop will be on sale at the Gallery throughout the season.