Marcel Breuer is one of the most important designers of the 1920s, working alongside Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus in Dessau. Breuer emigrated to the USA in 1937, where he first taught as a professor of architecture at Harvard and then, in the early 1940s, opened his own office. One of Breuer’s houses was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where the Bauhaus architect came to the attention of Rufus and Leslie Stillman - and without further ado, the development of a residential building in Litchfield, Connecticut was commissioned from Breuer. Between 1950 and 1953, a house, a studio and a pool were created from Breuer’s plans.

Three masters of modern art

The main house used glass, colour and natural materials in the post-War style that Breuers had developed at Harvard together with Walter Gropius. But Breuer also had extensive help when it came to the house’s facilities: the outer wall at the end of the swimming pool was decorated with a huge mural by none other than the artist Alexander Calder, while Breuer’s former Bauhaus colleague Xanti Schawinsky created a mural inside the house. Given that three great masters of modern art have immortalised their work in the Stillman House, the Wright auction house's estimate of two to three million dollars seems relatively modest.