A passion for
Jean Prouvé
Mostra
A passion for Jean Prouvé
From furniture to architecture
The private collection of Laurence and Patrick
Seguin
6 April – 8 September 2013
The Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli presents A Passion for Jean
Prouvé, an exhibition devoted to the furniture and architecture by the French
designer Jean Prouvé from the collection owned by Laurence and Patrick Seguin.
Laurence and Patrick Seguin discovered the work of Jean Prouvé, in the
late 1980s, through his furniture designs. They were immediately struck by the
unique aesthetic of these pieces, where the artistic skill lies wholly in
imperceptible technical mastery devoted to enhancing the strength of the
materials. While at the time very few people had even heard of Jean Prouvé,
their enthusiasm for his captivating lines was immediate, a revelation that
became a true passion.
The couple then began to take an interest in Jean Prouvé’s work as
a whole, of which the furniture is only a part, going on to discover his
architectural designs. With the idea that “there is no difference between
constructing a piece of furniture and constructing a building”, Jean
Prouvé applied the same design approach to both fields, basing all of his work
on it.
From the opening of their gallery in Paris in 1989, Laurence and Patrick
Seguin began to work in earnest promoting the creations of Jean Prouvé, with
the result that the most important international collectors and the most
prestigious museums now have works by the French architect and designer in
their collections. Indeed today Jean Prouvé is held to be one of the key
exponents of twentieth century design.
Laurence and Patrick Seguin are now presenting a number of works from
their private collection for the first time: around 40 pieces by Jean Prouvé,
most of which are prototypes or extremely rare, from the armchair designed for
the University dormitory of Nancy in 1932 to the light armchair created for the
University of Antony in 1954, to the furniture produced for Africa.
The same principles of functionality and rational fabrication that the
designer applied to furniture often destined for the public sector, can also be
found in Prouvé’s architectural designs: the same solid structures
feature clever mechanisms for assembly and organisation that enable both the
furniture and the constructions to be easily moved, disassembled and modified.
The Maison Metropole (8x12 meters) is now to be mounted for the first
time on the Lingotto track. In 1949 this aluminum construction won a Ministry
of Education competition for “mass-producible rural school with classroom
and teacher accommodation”: a masterpiece of nomadic housing, followed
the portico principle patented by Prouvé in 1939. The Ateliers Jean Prouvé
built two of them, one in Bouqueval, near Paris, and the other in Vantoux in
Moselle, which will be on show in Turin.
Taking four people three consecutive days to assemble, a stop-motion
film will be made of the construction process, with video footage streamed on
the Pinacoteca website.
Jean Prouvé (1901–1984) was a twentieth-century pioneer in the
innovative production of furniture and architecture. Son of one of the founders
of the Ecole de Nancy and godchild of Emile Gallé, he was imbued with the
creative philosophy of a group whose principal aim was an art/industry alliance
offering access to all.
Determined to be a man of his time, Prouvé explored all the current
technical resources in metalworking, soon abandoning wrought iron for bent
sheet steel: in the thirties he produced metal joinery, his early furniture,
architectural components and knockdown buildings, all in small series.
Of the opinion that "in their construction there is no difference
between a piece of furniture and a house", he developed a
"constructional philosophy" based on functionality and rational
fabrication. Free of all artifice, the resultant aesthetic chimed with the
doctrine of the Union of Modern Artists, of which Prouvé – with Le Corbusier,
Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand – was a founder member.
The same principles were applied to the making of furniture –
often intended for the public sector – and to the architecture of the
postwar boom. Astute assembly systems for hardwearing structures meant that
furniture and buildings alike could be readily dismantled, moved about and
modified.
The Prouvé blend of avant-garde spirit and humanist concerns has lost
none of its relevance. The originality of his different periods is repeatedly
rediscovered, from the first items for the University dormitory in Nancy in
1932 through those for a similar facility in Antony in 1954; the furniture for
Africa; and the knockdown postwar schools and "little architecture
machines" of the sixties. Working with the best architects, Jean Prouvé
left his stamp on many famous examples of twentieth-century building, most of
which are now classified historic monuments.