Cooper Hewitt says...
Born in Saint-Michael im Lungau, Salzburg on April 3, 1887 and died in Mödling bei Wien (near Vienna) on April 16, 1923. Dagobert Peche was trained as an architect at the Technische Hochschule and the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna and is considered one of the most influential designers of the Wiener Werkstätte, where he began his tenure as the firm’s creative director in the spring of 1915. Shortly thereafter, he was drafted to serve in the First World War in 1916 but was released a year later due to illness. From 1917 with the aid of Josef Hoffmann, Peche directed the Zurich branch of the Wiener Werkstätte until 1919. As scholars and museum curators have noted, Josef Hoffmann wrote that, “Dagobert Peche was the greatest ornamental genius Austria has produced since the Baroque.” His design aesthetic is characterized by a playful theatricality that re-envisioned the decorative motifs of the Baroque and Rococo in decorative arts, harnessing color, compositional rhythm, and form to achieve a modern and sophisticated effect.
For the Wiener Werkstätte, Peche designed across numerous media including wallpaper, textiles, furniture, glass, jewelry, toys, and metalwork. He also worked extensively as a graphic artist producing postcards, invitations, bookplates, and posters.
In addition to his work for the Wiener Werkstätte, Peche also designed textiles and carpets for Johann Backhausen, & Söhne, ceramics for Vereinigte Wiener & Gmundner Keramik, jewelry for Oskar Dietrich, furniture for J. Soulek, and wallpaper for Max Schmidt and Flammersheim & Steinmann.
Reference: Peter Noever, Dagobert Peche and the Wiener Werkstätte. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Published in conjunction with the exhibition held at Neue Galerie New York, Museum for German and Austrian Art.
