Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956), Austrian architect and decorator, was a pioneer of European modernism and founder of the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshop).

Josef Franz Maria Hoffmann was born in Pirnitz (Brtnice), then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on December 15, 1870. He studied architecture at the trade school in Brünn. Following his graduation in 1891 he went to Würzburg for a year of practical experience and then entered the special architectural school of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where he studied until 1895, first under Carl von Hasenauer and then under Otto Wagner. Upon graduation he won the Rome Prize. Otto Wagner then employed him as a draftsman in his office for several years.

During his studies and early professional years Hoffmann assimilated the historicist architectural traditions of Vienna, as exemplified in the work of Hasenauer and Wagner (among others); Wagner's functionalistic theories; the stylistic experimentations...