Breuer’s Bohemia: The Architect, His Circle, and Midcentury Houses in New England

Of all the Bauhaus exponents, none was so protean as Marcel Breuer (1902–81). In formal terms he was more expressive than his mentor Walter Gropius, and he influenced a generation of students, including I. M. Pei, Philip Johnson, and Paul Rudolph. Whether designing tubular steel furniture, binuclear houses, or a poured-in-place concrete chapel, Breuer seemed, with clarity and daring, to expand the possibilities of whichever material he explored. It’s no surprise that Crump’s book about Breuer’s free-spirited clients and aesthetically pure residential designs in Litchfield, CT, is—with its boldface font, striking black-and-white photographs of clients, and perfectly framed color images of the houses—a most cinematic publication, especially since it accompanies Crump’s 2021 documentary of the same title.