The Lost Architecture of Jean Welz

Peter Wyeth has masterfully charted architect Jean Welz’s work and trajectory from Vienna to Paris and South Africa, as well as his contacts with remarkable clients, colleagues, artists and photographers. He has at last paid homage to his striking designs, such as the Zilveli villa built in Paris in 1933, which deserves to be inscribed in the narrative of European Modernism. —Jean-Louis Cohen, Sheldon H. Solow Professor in the History of Architecture, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Known, if at all, as a much-admired painter in South Africa in the mid-twentieth century, Jean Welz's complex architecture career is now marvelously pieced together for the first time. —Robin Middleton, professor Emeritus, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University

Peter Wyeth's really marvelous book uncovers a highly gifted modernist unknown to the public, whose architecture absorbed the most important ideas of Loos and Le Corbusier. As a filmmaker, Wyeth combines a sharp analysis of Europe's artistic movements between the two wars with refreshing personal insights to create a fascinating portrait that is both fluid and easy to read. —Burkhardt Rukschcio, author of Adolf Loos: Leben und Werk

One of the last testimonies of modernism in intramural Paris is the the Maison Zilveli by the Viennese architect Jean Welz, near Adolf Loos and the Roche du Corbusier house. […] British filmmaker Peter Wyeth, very involved in the preservation of the house, explains that “it is very rare to have a modernist house that has remained unchanged: it is a real case study.” —Le Journal des Arts

Jean Welz and his architecture do exist! Let's hope his architecture survives and defies ignorance. — Richard Klein, architect, professor, chair of docomomo France

Peter Wyeth is to be commended not only for rediscovering Jean Welz and his work but also for reconstructing the network of interactions, innovations and transmission of ideas that constitute the real history of architecture. —Tim Benton, professor and author of The Villas of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret 1920–1930

This vivid and remarkable excavation of the life and work of the Viennese-born architect Jean Welz is a splendid contribution to the history of modernism. Welz was closely connected with two of the titans of the age, Le Corbusier and Adolf Loos, but, even more, he was an excellent architect, whose work was sensitive, beautiful, and inventive. Wyeth tells his story well, bringing known aspects of the tale of modern architecture into sharper focus, while adding much that is new. —Christopher Long, professor, University of Texas at Austin and author of The New Space: Movement and Experience in Viennese Modern Architecture.