Alvar Aalto - Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, London London Tuesday, November 26, 2024 | Phillips
  • Condition Report

  • Description

    This lot is the property of a private individual

    View our Conditions of Sale.

  • Provenance

    Private Collection

  • Literature

    Pirkko Tuukkanen, ed., Alvar Aalto Designer, Vammala, 2002, pp. 158-159, 173 (illustrated)
    Thomas Kellein, ed. alvar & aino aalto. design collection bischofberger, exh. cat., Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Zurich, 2005, p. 99

  • Catalogue Essay

    Phillips wishes to thank Antti Tevajärvi from Artek for his assistance in cataloguing the present lot.

  • Artist Biography

    Alvar Aalto

    Finnish • 1898 - 1976

    In contrast with the functionalism of the International Style (as well the neoclassicism put forward by the Nazi and Soviet regimes), Alvar Aalto brought a refreshing breath of humanism to modern design: "True architecture exists only where man stands in the center," he wrote. Aalto designed furniture in stack-laminated plywood composed of Finnish birch, which was cost-effective and lent warmth to his interiors. Aalto also revived Finnish glass design with his entries in the various Karhula-Iitala glassworks competitions throughout the 1930s.

    In 1936 he won first place for a collection of colorful, wavy vases in various sizes titled Eskimoerindens skinnbuxa (The Eskimo Woman’s Leather Breeches). The vases were an immediate success and the most popular size, now known as the "Savoy" vase, is still in production today. Aalto's freeform designs, in harmony with human needs and nature, anticipated the organic modernism of the 1950s and 1960s; in particular, his innovations in bent plywood had a major impact on designers such as Charles and Ray Eames.

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82

Lot offered with No Reserve

Occasional table, model no. 907B

birch
56.1 x 63 x 63 cm (22 1/8 x 24 3/4 x 24 3/4 in.)
Executed circa 1940s and manufactured by O.Y Huonekalu- ja Rakennustyötehdas A.B for Artek.

Estimate
£800 - 1,200 •‡

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Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, London

26 November - 5 December 2024