In 1951, André Bloc, editor-in-chief of the magazine l’Architecture d'aujourd'hui, established the group Espace. Founded on the doctrine of the 'synthesis of the arts', this decade-long movement aimed to create aesthetic, practical and animated spaces in the urban environment, bringing the work of pioneering avant-garde artists into dialogue with that of leading modernist architects, designers and industrialists. One of the group's first large-scale commissions was for the interior and furnishings of the Maison de la Tunisie at the Cité Universitaire in Paris, a building for Tunisian university students designed by Jean Sebag in 1952. Taking the project as an opportunity to put theory into practice, Bloc divided the Espace members into six groups of varied professionals, designating each the responsibility for a section of the interior. It was this context that gave rise to the unique collaboration between Charlotte Perriand as designer and leader, Sonia Delaunay, Nicolas Schöffer and Silvano Bozzolini as artists, and the Ateliers Jean Prouvé as manufacturers which produced the present bookcase.
In a number of ways, the 'Tunisie' bookcase, the defining feature of the forty dormitories for which Charlotte Perriand's group were responsible, embodies Perriand's established design method by the early 1950s. Formally, the bookcase involves several components developed earlier in Perriand's career, the stacked block formation of shelf support units and the sliding doors both having featured in the L'Équipement de la Maison series released with Pierre Jeanneret a decade prior. The piece also displays Perriand's mastery of what she called the "volumetric measure of space", a principle of spatial harmony in relation to applied functionality that she had formulated with Le Corbusier and perfected during her trip to Japan in the early 1940s. A historical photograph of one of the dormitories shows the bookcase's long bench-like base serving as an additional worktop, for example, whilst numerous revisions of plans for the piece evidence Perriand's preoccupation with proportional balance between its individual components and the broader furniture ensemble in the room. Yet, the present lot also involves novel features, spurred on by the spirit of collaboration intrinsic to the Maison de la Tunisie project, which make it a pivotal piece in Perriand's vast body of work.
A historical image of the present model 'Tunisie' bookcase, inside a student room of La Maison de la Tunisie, Cité Internationale Universitaire, Paris, 1952.
Image: © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2024The success of the Tunisie bookcase as an Espace product, exemplifying the union between art and industry, owes much to its manufacture by the Ateliers Jean Prouvé. Having entered a formal contract with the Ateliers in early 1952, Perriand now had full range to experiment with folded sheet steel, or "the new hardware", as she coined it, an inexpensive and flexible alternative to aluminium and tubular steel which Prouvé had introduced to her in 1950. With the help of Martha Villiger, a young École des Beaux-Artes student acting as intermediary between Perriand's Paris studio and Maxéville, Nancy where the Ateliers were located, Perriand designed the metal components of the bookcase, successfully achieving the animated aesthetic sought after by Bloc whilst maintaining structural soundness. This can be seen in the playful disposition of the shelf support units, for example, each made with a single piece of folded sheet steel, or in the interplay between open and closed space introduced by the diamond-point embossed aluminium sliding doors. With the base of the bookcase, Perriand developed a particularly innovative solution to reducing visual heaviness, introducing a U-shaped sheet steel belt around the surface of the bench to minimise the thickness of the wood.
A final, unifying feature of the 'Tunisie' bookcase is its colour scheme. Often mistakenly attributed to Sonia Delaunay alone, the colour compositions of the forty individual bookcases involved all members of Perriand's group, with Delaunay, Schöffer, Bozzolini, and Perriand herself responsible for ten pieces each. The present piece shares its Mondrian-like red, yellow, white, grey and black scheme with the twenty bookcases attributed to Perriand and Schöffer, the other two artists opting instead for understated combinations of grey tones. With its rhythmic distribution of colour, aesthetic dynamism, proportional and structural harmony, the 'Tunisie' bookcase answers the Espace manifesto's call for "an Art in which Colour and Form are indissolubly linked by their intrinsic and architectural qualities in an ideal expression of relationships and proportions".
Provenance
Orange Group, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner, circa 2003Literature
Alexander von Vegesack, et al., eds., 100 Masterpieces from the Vitra Design Museum Collection, exh. cat., Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, 1996, pp. 186-87
Mary McLeod, ed., Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living, New York, 2003, pp. 143, 229
Jacques Barsac, Charlotte Perriand, Un Art d'Habiter, 1903-1959, Paris, 2005, p. 361 for a prototype, pp. 363 for technical drawings, 364-65 for renderings, 383, 500
Peter Sulzer, Jean Prouvé: Œuvre complète / Complete Works, Volume 3: 1944-1954, Basel, 2005, p. 259
François Laffanour et al., Living with Charlotte Perriand, Paris, 2019, pp. 256-57
Sébastian Cherruet and Jacques Barsac, eds., Charlotte Perriand: Inventing a New World, exh. cat., Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2019, pp. 266-67, 400Artist Biography
Charlotte Perriand
French • 1903 - 1999
Trailblazer Charlotte Perriand burst onto the French design scene in her early 20s, seemingly undeterred by obstacles in an era when even the progressive Bauhaus school of design barred women from architecture and furniture design courses. She studied under Maurice Dufrêne at the École de l'Union Centrale des art Décoratifs, entering into a competition at the 1925 Expo des Arts Décoratifs by age 22 and gaining critical acclaim for her exhibition at the Salon d'Automne in 1927.
On the heels of this success, that same year she joined the Paris design studio of Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret. For ten years the three collaborated on "equipment for living," such as the iconic tubular steel B306 Chaise Longue (1928). After World War II, Perriand joined forces with Jean Prouvé to create modernist furniture that combined the precise lines of Prouvé's bent steel with the soft, round edges and warmth of natural wood.
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'Tunisie' bookcase, designed for the student rooms of La Maison de la Tunisie, Cité Internationale Universitaire, Paris
circa 1952
Pine, sapele mahogany, painted steel, painted diamond-point embossed aluminium.
166 x 354 x 53 cm (65 3/8 x 139 3/8 x 20 7/8 in.)
Produced by Les Ateliers Jean Prouvé, Nancy, France.
Estimate
£100,000 - 150,000 ‡
Sold for £139,700
Antonia King
Head of Sale, Design
+44 20 7901 7944
Antonia.King@phillips.com
Design
London Auction 13 November 2024
