Jonas Bohlin - Design New York Thursday, June 8, 2023 | Phillips

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  • Jonas Bohlin is recognized as one of the preeminent Swedish architects and designers of his generation. Upon graduating in 1981 from Konstfack, the National College of Arts, Craft, and Design, in Stockholm, Bohlin found notoriety almost instantly. For his graduation show, Bohlin presented the Concrete armchair, a work consisting solely of two slabs of concrete and a tubular iron frame, of which approximately 100 examples were made. The chair, which was shortly thereafter exhibited at Möbelmässan in Stockholm, sparked a fervent debate in the Swedish design community. An emblem of post-modernism and counterpoint to the warm materials and subtle curves of Scandinavian design up to that point, the Concrete armchair marked a departure. In 1983, Bohlin received the award for “Excellent Swedish Design” given by the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design. The chair went into production with the furniture manufacturer Källemo and quickly became a collector’s item for its instantly recognizable, stark silhouette and its place in Swedish design history. Over the past four decades, Källemo has produced the chair in a variety of mediums—including the original concrete form, a version in iron, and a version made of painted wood and steel. The present chair is an early example of this last version, as indicated by the impressed mark on the underside of the chair, which has been in continual production since the late 1980s.

    • Provenance

      Lief Gallery, Los Angeles
      Acquired from the above by the present owner, 2021

    • Literature

      Penny Sparke, "Scandinavia: Not Yet Out of the Wood," Design, August 1982, p. 38
      Ulf Beckman, Jonas Bohlin, Stockholm, 1993, p.7

Property from a Private International Collection

108

"Concrete" armchair

designed 1980, produced circa 1990
Painted wood, painted steel.
35 1/2 x 19 1/4 x 20 3/4 in. (90.2 x 48.9 x 52.7 cm)
Produced by Källemo, Värnamo, Sweden. Underside impressed KÄLLEMO/VARNAMO SWEDEN.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$8,000 - 12,000 

Contact Specialist

Benjamin Green
Associate Specialist
Associate Head of Sale
bgreen@phillips.com
+1 917 207 9090

Design

New York Auction 8 June 2023