Menu

Jean Prouvé

Jean Prouvé, Vestiaire Antony, 1956 Bent sheet steel, wood, and Isorel, 74 3/16 × 70 ¼ × 13 ¾ inches (188.5 × 178.5 × 35 cm)

Jean Prouvé, Vestiaire Antony, 1956

Bent sheet steel, wood, and Isorel, 74 3/16 × 70 ¼ × 13 ¾ inches (188.5 × 178.5 × 35 cm)

Jean Prouvé, Cité armchair (red), c. 1933 Metal, leather and canvas, 33 ⅜ × 27 ½ × 35 ⅜ inches (85 × 70 × 90 cm)

Jean Prouvé, Cité armchair (red), c. 1933

Metal, leather and canvas, 33 ⅜ × 27 ½ × 35 ⅜ inches (85 × 70 × 90 cm)

Jean Prouvé, Ferembal Demountable House, 1948 Metal, wood, aluminum, and glass, 137 13/16 × 933 1/16 × 417 5/16 inches (350 × 2,370 × 1,060 cm)Photo by Rob McKeever

Jean Prouvé, Ferembal Demountable House, 1948

Metal, wood, aluminum, and glass, 137 13/16 × 933 1/16 × 417 5/16 inches (350 × 2,370 × 1,060 cm)
Photo by Rob McKeever

About

Jean Prouvé was born in Nancy, France in 1901, where he died in 1984. He is widely acknowledged as one of the twentieth century's most important and influential designers whose wide-ranging oeuvre combined bold elegance with economy of means and strong social conscience. Working as a craftsman, designer, manufacturer, architect, teacher, and engineer, his career spanned more than sixty years, during which time he produced prefabricated houses, building components and facades, as well as furniture for the home, office and school. Prouvé has played a pivotal role in the development of cutting-edge technology and modular systems for mass production in the post-war modernist period.

Prouvé trained as an artisan blacksmith and his intimate knowledge of metal remained the foundation of his work and career. Aware of the limitations of ornamental and wrought-iron work and keen to embrace the modern movement, he moved on to steel and aluminum, folding and arc-welding. In 1931 he established the Atelier Jean Prouvé, where he began to produce light-weight metal furniture of his own design, as well as collaborating with some of the best-known designers of his time, including Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand. Furniture production became a core part of his business. He favored the public sector in the growing areas of health, education and administration, which reflected a social ideal but also offered the economies of scale. By 1936 he was producing a catalogue of standard models for hospitals, schools and offices. The potential for mass production inspired Prouvé to develop and patent industrial products using folded sheet metal for the construction of buildings. These included movable partitioning, metal doors and elevator cages.

The onset of WWII and the age of austerity that followed marked a period of enforced experiment for Prouvé and in 1947 he moved his operations to Maxéville, just outside Nancy. With his own design studio, he could combine research, prototype development and production. At Maxéville he set about fulfilling his ambitious plan to alter the building process from a craft-based practice to that of a mechanized industry, producing not only houses, prefabricated huts, doors, windows, roof elements and façade panels but also a production line for furniture based on his own designs. It was in this creative environment that the prefabricated refugee houses of 1945 were developed, followed by the flat-packed, tropical houses for Niger and the Republic of Congo in 1949 and 1950.

His work is included in private and public collections worldwide, including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris and Museum of Modern Art, New York. Major exhibitions include “Jean Prouvé: Constructeur, 1901–1984,” Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1990–91); “Jean Prouvé: Three Nomadic Structures,” Pacific Design Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2005); “Jean Prouvé: A Tropical House,” Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2006); “Jean Prouvé: The Poetics of the Technical Object,” Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany (2006–07, traveled to Kamakura Museum of Modern Art; Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt; Netherlands Architecture Institute, Maastricht; Hotel de Ville de Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris; Design Museum, London; and Museo dell'Ara Pacis, Rome, among other venues); “Ateliers Jean Prouvé,” Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008-09); a multi-exhibition, multi-venue tribute at Musée des beaux-arts, Nancy, France (2012); and “A Passion for Jean Prouvé: From Furniture to Architecture,” Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin (2013).

Fairs, Events & Announcements

Jean Prouvé’s 1947 demountable wood chair CB 22 in the Gagosian Shop, New York

Visit

Madison Avenue Spring Gallery Walk 2023

Saturday, May 20, 2023, 10am–6pm
New York
madisonavenuebid.org

Join Artnews and the Madison Avenue Business Improvement District on a springtime walk to visit over sixty galleries that line Madison Avenue from East 57th to East 86th Streets. The Gagosian Shop is featuring an installation dedicated to Jean Prouvé’s 1947 demountable wood chair CB 22, alongside Rachel Feinstein’s newly launched ring collection with Ippolita and the Jewish Museum, and the latest Gagosian publications, including Louise Bonnet: Recent Paintings. An exhibition by Donald Judd spanning the 980 and 976 Madison Avenue galleries is also on view.

Jean Prouvé’s 1947 demountable wood chair CB 22 in the Gagosian Shop, New York

Detail of Jean Prouvé’s 1947 demountable wood chair CB 22. Photo: © Galerie Patrick Seguin

Installation

Jean Prouvé
Demountable Wood Chair CB 22

May 8–June 30, 2023
Gagosian Shop, New York

Jean Prouvé’s 1947 demountable chair CB 22, in wood, will be on view in the Gagosian Shop, New York, in collaboration with Galerie Patrick Seguin. The presentation will feature the chair in unassembled and constructed displays, and will also include a selection of rare and recently published books about Prouvé.

The CB 22 chair, which was announced during the Meubles de France competition in 1947, is historically significant in that it underscores Prouvé’s ability to adapt and innovate, using wood at a juncture when materials such as steel were in short supply. It comprises two solid wood lateral bases held together by two braces bolted on the outside. The back and seat were initially fixed to the frame with screws, then with tapped studs, while the tubes protecting the braces are made of metal. The first “do-it-yourself” chair, it was shown disassembled on the cover of the Ateliers Jean Prouvé furniture catalogue in 1951 and was manufactured until the studio’s closure in 1953.

Detail of Jean Prouvé’s 1947 demountable wood chair CB 22. Photo: © Galerie Patrick Seguin

Museum Exhibitions

Franz West, Paravents, 2010, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany © Archiv Franz West, © Estate Franz West. Photo: Wolfgang Günzel

Closed

Paraventi
Folding Screens from the 17th to 21st Centuries

October 26, 2023–February 22, 2024
Fondazione Prada, Milan
www.fondazioneprada.org

This exhibition investigates the histories and semantics of folding screens by tracing trajectories of cross-pollination between the East and the West, processes of hybridization between different art forms and functions, collaborations between designers and artists, and the emergence of new works. Paraventi presents more than seventy folding screens as well as a selection of contemporary projects, commissioned specifically for this show, by more than fifteen international artists. Work by Francis Bacon, Man Ray, Pablo PicassoJean Prouvé, Ed RuschaCy Twombly, and Franz West is included.

Franz West, Paravents, 2010, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany © Archiv Franz West, © Estate Franz West. Photo: Wolfgang Günzel