Late modern period / Contemporary period > Artistic movements since the end of the 19th century > Rationalist architecture / Modern movement
Late modern period / Contemporary period > Avant-garde art movements
Late modern period / Contemporary period > Artistic movements since the end of the 19th century > Art from the first third of the 20th century
Late modern period / Contemporary period > Artistic movements since the end of the 19th century > Post-war art
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Technologists > Object designers
Plastic, visual and performing artists > Photographers
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Character
Charlotte Perriand
París 24-10-1903
‖ París 27-10-1999
Period of activity: From 1925 until 1993
Geographical classification:
Europe > France
Socio-cultural movements
Late modern period / Contemporary period > Artistic movements since the end of the 19th century > Rationalist architecture / Modern movement
Late modern period / Contemporary period > Avant-garde art movements
Late modern period / Contemporary period > Artistic movements since the end of the 19th century > Art from the first third of the 20th century
Late modern period / Contemporary period > Artistic movements since the end of the 19th century > Post-war art
Groups by dedication
Technologists > Architects
Technologists > Object designers
Plastic, visual and performing artists > Photographers
Writers > Autobiographers
Context of feminine creation
Alongside Charlotte Perriand in France, within the modern movement in architecture and design, we find parallel pioneering women architects and designers of the time. Ireland's Eileen Gray; Margarete Schüte-Lihotzky, with her extensive work in social housing and her obsession with facilitating women's work at home so that they could have more free time; Finland's Aino Aalto; Denmark's Ragna Grubb, interested in social housing; the Chinese-American Anne Tyng, co-author of the most significant buildings of Louis Khan's office in the 1950s in the USA; and Lilly Reich, who promoted Bauhaus designs amidst so much productive activity. Designers from Bauhaus school, such as Marianne Brandt or Gunta Stötzl must be highlighted too.
Review
Charlotte Perriand is considered one of the most innovative designers in the 20th century. She was pioneer within the modern movement. Her artistic and technological vision has contributed to define the so-called "art of living", the idea of design as transformative and functional. Her work reflects changes in culture and attitudes in the mid-20th century, and in respect of women's role in society and in city life.
Justifications
His innovative and avant-garde designs had a great influence on architecture and design in the 20th century.
He belonged to the modern movement in architecture and throughout his career had very avant-garde proposals.
His artistic and technological vision has helped define the idea that design should be transformative and functional, which is called "the art of living".
Biography
Charlotte Perriand had a diverse and rich career which lasted almost 75 years and it included works in Europe, Africa, South America and Asia. Her long career included Art Deco, the modern movement of then machine age, the organic rustic in 1930s, mass-produced metallic and wooden furniture in 1950s and 1960s, as well as plastic and prefabricated units in 1970s.
Throughout her life, she defended the union between manufacture and nature, in a kind of philosophy based on a "synthesis of arts".
She was born in Paris. Her parents worked as a tailor and an haute couture dressmaker. In 1920, she signed up in the Central Union of Decorative Arts, where she studied furniture design for 5 years. She was disappointed by the approach based on craftwork and Beaux-Arts style defended by the school. Consequently, she looked for inspiration in the aesthetics of machines of cars and bicycles that she saw in the streets of Paris.
She was put in the spotlight when she was 24 years old with her Bar under the roof made of chrome steel and anodized aluminium, that was presented in the Salon d'automne in 1927, receiving the critical acclaim. Her success let her work as a collaborator in the studio Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret and it was in this period when she decided to break definitively with the architectural academicism.
While the French déco was still dominant in the 1920s and 1930s, Perriand took the leap to create furniture with an avant-garde design, where functionality and ergonomics are decisive aesthetic factors, as well as new technologies of materials.
Some of her most known designs are from that time. For instance, the House on the Edge of the Water (1934), and the LC2 and LC3 armchairs or the LC4 chaise longue (she is the co-athor of the last ones along with Le Corbusier and Jeanneret), although, generally, the only recognised author has been Le Corbusier.
Le Corbusier had furnished his spaces with objects of which he was not the author until the moment in which Perriand began to collaborate with him. Le Corbusier's interior space was qualified with Charlotte Perriand and its functionality was taken to the extreme, thanks to an absolute coherence between interior design, furniture and architecture.
She proposed that the pieces should be based on their own time, borrowing ideas from automotive and aeronautical industries, resulting in pieces of great significance in the history of design.
In 1929, guided by a spirit of renewal, she resigned from the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs (Decorator Artists show) and founded with other members the Union des Artistes Modernes (Union of Modern Artists). This movement set out to explore the possibilities of new materials and techniques in order to adapt them to a modern and updated vision of the decorative arts.
In 1929, she and Le Corbusier presented also the furniture of the room: shelves, chairs and tables, in the Salon d'automne.
Influenced by her political convictions, Charlotte Perriand, in cooperation with René Herbst, Louis Sognot, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, made House for a Young Man for the World's Fair of 1935. Space was divided in two areas, one for mind and another for the body. The house was equipped with furniture made with natural materials, like a wooden armchair, made by Perriand. Throughout her life, Perriand increased her liking for natural materials. Wood was her favourite material.
In 1937, she left the studio Le Corbusier and turned her attention to research on more traditional materials and more organic forms. She was involved in research in terms of prefabrication of modular housing, on which she collaborated with Jean Prouvé.
Her collaborations increased greatly throughout her career, and she worked with other architects like Lcio Costa, Niemeyer, and Candilis, Josic & Woods.
She collaborated with Le Corbusier again after the war, and they developed the prototype of a built-in kitchen for the Unité d'habitation of Marseille.
During the Spanish civil war, Perriand denounced cruelty of war and kept in touch with Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. Guernica of Picasso had a great effect on her.
In 1938 and 1939 she was devoted to research on wood. The reflections on mountain architecture began. In 1940, she travelled to Japan as official assistant on industrial design. There, too, she continued her research and worked at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, while Japanese artists and designers of her generation were inspired by the ideas and concepts she spread.
When Japan went to war as an allied of Germany, Perriand tried to come back to France, but she was obliged to stay in Vietnam from 1942 to 1946, due to naval blockade. During her stay, she studied wooden and textile techniques of local craftwork. Her style was very influenced by Eastern aesthetics and inspired by Japanese traditions.
When she returned to France, Perriand turned to other passions, photography and nature, and took hundreds of photographies during her mountain trips. Later on, this photographies became the base of some of her most innovative creations.
In 1960s, Perriand created some of her designs that show her best savoir-faire, like the Refolo bench, Nuage bookcase, Rio, Mexique and Pétalo tables, and Berger and Méribel stools, that have become worldwide icons of design nowadays.
The project where all her previous explorations of architecture, prefabrication, standardisation, minimum cell, industrialisation and materials came together was the Les Arcs winter complex in Savoie, France. Between 1967 and 1982, Perriand designed and built the three ski resorts in Les Arcs, situated at 1600, 1800 and 2000 metres above sea level, where 18,000 people had to stay.
In 1993, she created the Book of Tea for UNESCO, inspired by the Japanese pavilions for tea. Since 2004, the firm Cassina has made again part of her furniture.
Perriand got married twice. The first time in 1926, one year after her graduation, and she divorced in 1930. During her exile in Vietnam, she married Jacques Martin, and her daughter Pernette was born there.
She died in 1999, in Paris, after a long and fruitful life devoted to design and architecture, being always very influential and innovator.
One year before her death, in 1998, she published her autobiography: Une Vie de Création (A life of creation).
Charlotte Perriand devoted her life to constant research on "the art of living" and was always engaged with her time, with housing, and with equipment, and the need of functional living. Her priority was people instead of objects.
1928: She refurbished the interior of Villa Church in Ville-d'Avray and Villa La Roche in Paris (architects: Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret). Design of LC armchairs, chairs and tables.
1929: Salon d'automne: Equipment for rooms: shelves, chairs and tables.
1930-1932: She equipped rooms for students and the library-hall of the Swiss Pavilion in the Cité Universitaire de Paris (University city of Paris) (architects: Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret).
1932: She refurbished barracks, canteens, kitchens and kindergartens of the Cité-Refuge de l'Armée du Salut (City-Refuge of the Salvation Army) (architects: Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret).
1933: She participated in the work of Soyuz Centre in Moscow, USSR (architects: Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret).
1934: Prototype for the House on the Edge of the Water
1935: House for a Young Man.
1936: She made the photomontage of The Great Misery of Paris. She made another montage entitled the profession of wheal in the waiting room of the Ministry of Agriculture.
1937: Photomontage with the programme of the Popular Front.
1938: Refurbishing of a hotel in Saint-Nicolas de Véroce (Haute-Savoie). Design of the Refuge House. Design of the famous desk Bumerang.
1939: She worked for refurbishing a hotel for the station of winter sports in Méribel-les-Allues (architect: Henry-Jacques Le Même).
1943-1946: She made a pavilion for the exposition of craftwork in Hanoi, then, French Indochina.
1946-1948: She worked in interior architecture of the first buildings of the station of winter sports in Méribel-les-Allues. She created a huge amount of furniture (architects: Paul Grillo, Christian Durupt, assisted by André Detour).
1946-1948: She and Pierre Jeanneret carried out economic wooden furniture, produced between 1946 and 1951 by the House Equipment society, subsequently for the BCB.
1946-1956: Furniture for the Franco-American Memorial hospital in Saint-Lô, along with Paul Nelson.
1952: She designed furniture for the interior of the Cité Universitaire de Paris (University city of Paris) for the Tunisie house (architect: Juan Sebag) and the House of Mexico (architects: Jorge and Roberto Medellín).
1952: Prototype of bar-kitchen in Ville Radieuse in Marseille, along with Le Corbusier. Design of the Tunisie bookshelf.
1954: Refurbishing of the interior of Hotel of France in Guinea along with Jean Prouvé and the LWD Workshop.
1957: Refurbishing of the offices of Air France in London (architect: Peter Bradock) as well as the House of Sahara (architects: Guy Lagneau and Michel Weil).
1958: Prototype of the House of Sahara for the Household Arts Shows in front of the Grand Palais of Paris (destroyed), along with Jean Prouvé and the LWD Workshop.
1960-1961: She built her chalet in Méribel-les-Allues, in Savoie.
1960s: She designed her series of armchairs Refolo, bookshelf Nuage, tables Rio, Mexique and Pétalo, and stools Berger and Meribel.
1967-1988: Until 1982, she was the director of a studio of architects focused on the construction of the winter station in Les Arcs, she refurbished the major part of buildings.
1993: She designed a house of tea for a programme for "dialogue between cultures" coordinated by Hiroshi Teshigahara for UNESCO.
This sheet for author can be studied in the following fields and subjects:
Visual and plastic arts
Design
Architecture
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