Eckart Muthesius

Eckart Muthesius (1904-1989) was a German architect best remembered for designing the Manik Bagh palace, located in Indore in the present-day Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Eckart was the son of Hermann Muthesius, a famous German architect who was among the founders of the Deutscher Werkbund and had the opportunity to train in his father's studio. He also attended the Academy of Applied Arts in Berlin and the Polytechnic in London and it was in England, in Oxford, that he had the opportunity to meet Yashwant Rao Holkar, Maharaja of Indore and a great patron with a passion for architecture in particular, who commissioned him for the Manik Bagh (1930-39). Considered a small masterpiece in the combination of Bauhaus architecture and Art Deco interiors, the palace designed by Muthesius housed creations by some of the most important masters of modernism, including Le Corbusier and Eileen Gray, alongside works by great names of Art Deco such as Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann. Muthesius himself personally designed some of the furnishings, now reissued by the German brand ClassiCon. From 1936 to 1939 the maharaja also appointed Muthesius as a consultant for urban planning and redevelopment of the State of Indore, a position he later abandoned with the outbreak of the Second World War which forced him to return to his homeland where he continued his activity as an architect in the following decades. Some of his creations have also been re-proposed by the lighting brand Tecnolumen.