Martin Eisler, creativity as a way of being and seeing things

Martin Eisler was first and foremost a creative, says his daughter Ruth. Remembered today mostly as one of the most important architects and designers of Brazilian Modernism, he was also an opera director and set designer. He was a great lover of music and a highly sensitive man who, having fled from Vienna, arrived in Argentina in 1938 with very few belongings and a completely new life in front of him.

Creativity became his lifeline and restored him the success he had been on the brink of achieving, and which history had unjustly deprived him of, after his brilliant studies andcollaboration with renowned Austrian architects Oskar Strnad and Clemens Holzmeister. He met up with many German Jews who had fled to Latin America before him, and this created the opportunity to establish new relations, make himself known in Argentina and Brazil and quickly become a renowned architect and interior designer. These two roles were almost inextricable for Eisler, who conceived every element of a house as a detail of a single grand aesthetic vision, and designed every particular, whether structural, functional or decorative of his projects as part of this. Which is why Martin Eisler’s works are extremely numerous, spread throughout many countries, and unfortunately difficult to catalogue exhaustively. From buildings to furniture, to the most diverse objects, from door and window handles and coat stands to tables and chairs. His creative vision was total, the result of a complete aesthetic outlook that elegantly and rationally took care ofeven the smallest details; he worked on lines and materials inspired by the European Bauhaus movement and Latin metals and woods. Many of the famous buildings by the renowned Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer constructed in the futuristic city of Brasilia were furnished by Eislerthrough the companies Interieur Forma and Knoll, who designed historic pieces appreciated all over the world, such as the Costela and Reversível chairs, re-edited today by Tacchini Italia Forniture. The story of a designer who made history is also the story of a man and his life. In this interview, Martin Eisler’s children, Alberto and Ruth, remember their father as an architect and as a man.