Timeless modernism: The 20th century's most influential designers

The work of Hungarian-born, German-trained furniture designer Peter Ghyczy (77) will be celebrated at a solo exhibition, "Peter Ghyczy: 50 Years of Functionalism," at the Brussels Design Museum. The exhibition runs February 7 to March 11 and will later be shown at the Kunstmuseen Krefeld. Here the artist is pictured with his iconic 'Egg' chair.

This piece of outdoor furniture created by Peter Ghyczy in 1968 is an icon of postwar modernist design and an important experiment with plastic. The patent for the design was sold to East Germany and manufactured in a small town near Dresden. There it became known as the "Senftenberg Egg" and was available to the East German public for the near equivalent of an average month's salary.

This minimalist architect and designer was one of the first to adopt industrialization practices and the "design for the masses" ideas. His iconic 1926 Barcelona Chair, made of padded leather and curved steel, along with his radical building designs, would come to define the modernist movement. Van der Rohe briefly directed the Bauhaus school and worked with Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius.

Inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, Behrens led the reform of German architecture and design at the turn of the century and trained the likes of Mies van der Rohe. He co-founded the German Werkbund, a collective of artists, architects, designers and industrialists who both modernized and revolutionized German design — and for whom he designed the pictured exhibition poster in 1914.

This pioneering German architect is perhaps best-known as the founder of the Bauhaus school. Highly exploratory in nature, the Bauhaus embraced the idea that artful design and industrial production were key to the future of design. Despite his success, Gropius fled Germany as the Nazis rose to power and ultimately ended up in the US, where he continued his architectural pursuits until his death.

The Swiss-French designer, writer, artist and urban planner was also a modernist architecture pioneer who heralded a raw, rationalist aesthetic. He is considered one of the leading architects of the “International Style” which developed in the 1920s and 30s and emphasized better housing solutions for people living in crowded cities — from Berlin and Paris to Chandigarh, India.

The Parisian architect, furniture and industrial designer had a 75-year-career that flourished during the modernist period by embracing new technologies like tubular steel. Her collaborations with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret included the iconic B306 Chaise Lounge from 1928 (pictured), a masterpiece of 20th century furniture-making. Her work has only recently gained widespread attention.

The Austrian-born artist and product designer became well-known during the "Made in Italy" boom of the 1960s, imbuing industrial products like lamps and typewriters with alluring organic forms. Sottsass’s design philosophy drew on pop art and postmodernism to create brightly colored and asymmetrical designs (see pictured "Altar: For the Sacrifice of My Solitude," that blurs art and design).

The Danish functionalist designer and architect is famous for his furniture designs, as well as his meticulously-planned architectural projects. His Egg chair (pictured), originally created for the SAS Royal in 1956 — a boutique hotel for which Jacobsen designed every element — is a design masterpiece. Jacobsen remains a seminal figure in the minimalist “Scandinavian design" movement.

Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid was one of the most influential architect-designers of recent decades. While she is best-known for her architectural projects — many of which feature signature sinuous curves (including the pictured Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London — Hadid and her firm designed furniture and products. She was the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize for Architecture.