Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Scottish architect, designer, water colorist and artist
1868 CE to 1928 CE
Charles Rennie Mackintosh (June 7, 1868 – December 10, 1928) is a Scottish architect, designer, water colorist and artist.
His artistic approach has much in common with European Symbolism.
His work, alongside that of his wife Margaret Macdonald, is influential on European design movements such as Art Nouveau and Secessionism and praised by great modernists such as Josef Hoffmann.
Mackintosh was born in Glasgow and dies in London.
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The Scottish architect and designer, who specializes in a predominantly geometric line, is a particular influence on the Austrian Sezessionstil.
Close links exist between Art Nouveau designers in Vienna and in Glasgow, where Mackintosh, in collaboration with three other students (one of whom, Margaret MacDonald, will become his wife in 1900), has achieved an international reputation as a designer of unorthodox posters, craftwork, and furniture.
The so-called "Glasgow" style is exhibited in Europe and influences the Viennese Art Nouveau movement known as Sezessionstil (in English, the Vienna Secession) around 1900.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh exhibit to great acclaim at the Eighth Secession Exhibition in Vienna, as does Charles Robert Ashbee.
Mackintosh, his future wife Margaret MacDonald, her sister Frances MacDonald, and Herbert MacNair had met at evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art and become known as a collaborative group, "The Four", or "The Glasgow Four", and are prominent members of the "Glasgow School" movement.
The group exhibits in Glasgow, London and Vienna, and these exhibitions help establish Mackintosh's reputation.
Mackintosh also works in interior design, furniture, textiles and metalwork.
Much of this work combines Mackintosh's own designs with those of his wife, whose flowing, floral style complements his more formal, rectilinear work.
Margaret, exhibiting with Mackintosh, is an influence on the Secessionists Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh completes House Windyhill in Kilmacolm (1899-1901) for the Davidson family, his first significant independent commission giving him the opportunity to design both architecture and furniture in a domestic setting.
Mackintosh enters a competition run by Zeitshrift fuer Innendekoration for the design and decoration of Haus eines Kunstfreundes ("House for an Art Lover") in 1901 (a project never realized).