"The seats were a kind of wave which curved down, surged up, and fell once more, thus forming an object without beginning or end," said Kiesler of his Multi-use Chairs, "and in its convex curves the body could take ease." Kiesler designed these chairs—constructed for seven dollars each in the Bronx—to fill the unconventional spaces he created for Peggy Guggenheim's The Art of this Century Gallery on 57th Street. The Surrealist-inspired "rest-forms" were meant to be versatile; Kiesler delineated eighteen uses for them, including seating and stands for the display of objects. Their organic shape demonstrates Kiesler's experimentation with "continuous tension."

Gallery label from

Shaping Modernity: Design 1880-1980, December 23, 2009–July 25, 2010 .

Medium Oak and linoleum
Dimensions 33 3/8 x 15 5/8 x 35" (84.8 x 39.7 x 88.9 cm)
Credit Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. Purchase Fund
Object number 118.1948
Department Architecture & Design

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Frederick Kiesler

Frederick Kiesler

American, born Austria-Hungary. 1890–1965 53 works online

Throughout his career, Frederick Kiesler worked across mediums. He believed that “sculpture, painting, architecture should not be used as wedges to split our experience of art and life; they are here to link, to correlate, to bind dream and reality.

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