Robert Mallet-Stevens is an important figure in the development of Modernism in Europe, and especially France, in the inter-war decades of the 1920s and 30s. Born into a wealthy family of art collectors, he was exposed early in life to significant movements and stylists,including Vienna Secessionists Josef Hoffman and Gustav Klimt, who collaborated on the Palais Stocklet villa in Brussels for Mallet-Stevens' uncle.