Charlotte Perriand, France's famous woman designer who produced so many revolutionary pieces of furniture during the 1930's with Swiss architect and artist Charles Edouard Jeanneret called Le Corbusier died in Paris on October 27th 1999 aged 96. The much inventive Charlotte Perriand was already an avant-garde artist at 22.
Her meeting in 1927 with Le Corbusier in his studio 35 rue de Sèvres in Paris led a 10-year fruitful close association though the Swiss architect did not give her a warm welcoming during their first encounter.
Born on October 24th 1903, Charlotte studied at the Central Union of Decorative Arts in 1920 and was soon influenced by the works of Le Corbusier and of those artists from the German Bauhaus or the Soviet Constructivist movement.
She made sensation with her «Bar under a roof» made of metal and glass which she first produced for her own use in a Parisian attic she had transformed into an apartment.
Her main concern was to gain space in dwellings thanks to the flexibility of light cosy pieces of furniture placed in a warm environment.
In 1928 she designed her famous dining table, now exhibited in the Paris Museum of Modern Art, made of a rolling rubber top set between two, metallic slides that could be stripped off after use.
Most of her creations suited the expectations of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret with whom she formed a famous trio. In addition, she became Pierre's companion and both created some of the greatest masterpieces of contemporary furniture such as sculpture-furniture, metallic and leather cubic armchairs and a much celebrated deck-chair which looked like a resting human body.
Most of these pieces of furniture were acquired by many museums around the world and edited for commercial purposes between the 1930's and 1960's.
However Charlotte refused to be considered as a designer or an architect and her main motive was to improve living conditions in flat by reinventing the notion of habitable space. A member of the Union of Modern Artists in 1930, she also shared various missions with her neighbour Fernand Léger and went on to use all kinds of materials, creating sensation once again at the Brussels Exhibition in 1935 with a wood straw armchair and the «Room of a young man». She also used wood in conceiving an impressive desk for Jean-Richard Bloch, Editor in chief of the Belgian daily «Le Soir» in 1938.
Charlotte Perriand also traveled extensively in Germany and in the Soviet Union during the 1930's and after ending her partnership with Le Corbusier in 1937 she accepted in June 1940 an invitation from Japanese architect Sakakura, a former aide of Le Corbusier, to visit Japan not knowing that she would be stranded in Asia during six years as a result of the Second World War. She returned to France in 1946 after a four-year stay in Indochina where she married Jacques Martin, a Navy purser. They had a daughter, Pernette, who later became an architect.
Charlotte continued to work transforming her previous creations and producing pieces much in tune with Japanese style. In 1998 a major exhibition celebrating her long lasting career was held in Tokyo where she was considered as a «living treasure». Five years earlier, she had created a tea-house, a bamboo pavilion topped by a navy sail, in the gardens of the UNESCO in Paris at the request of the Japanese ambassador attached to the international organisation.
After the war Charlotte had worked with Jean Prouvé and taken part in many projects abroad, notably in Africa and in Brazil, putting forward a rare sense of humanity in her creations while a retrospective exhibition of her works took place at the Paris Museum of Decorative Arts in 1985 and at the Design Museum of London in 1996.
At 90 she embarked on the task of transforming her small two-room flat in Paris adding sliding transparent panels, fitting new piece of furniture and rearranging space with an incredible magic touch.
She continued to work with much dedication being always in high spirits, showing some unbelievable wisdom before publishing her memoirs last year.
At the end of her life Charlotte was much close to architect Renzo Piano and Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake. Much ahead of her time she will be remembered as one of the greatest creators of the 20th Century with a career spanning over 72 years.
A.D
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