Klaus Grabe Collection
Klaus Grabe (1910–2004) was trained at the Bauhaus in Germany before emigrating in the late 1930s to Mexico City with fellow Bauhaus students Morley Webb and Michael van Beuren. In 1941, while Grabe was still in Mexico, the Museum of Modern Art organized “Organic Design in Home Furnishings,” a competition open to designers from across the United States and Latin America. Winning entries were displayed at the museum as part of an exhibition of the same name, and rewarded with contracts for manufacture and sale by select department stores. Debuting their work alongside that of Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen, a chaise lounge design by van Beuren, Grabe, and Webb was one of the winning entries exhibited at MoMA and available via special order in the United States. The chaise was manufactured by van Beuren’s company Domus in Mexico City.
Grabe later moved to New York where he worked as an architect and furniture designer. In the 1950s, his designs began to gain recognition through features in Life, Popular Science, and others. In 1954 he published the book Build Your Own Modern Furniture.
