Charlotte Perriand – From photography to design
Petit Palais
From April 7th to September 18th 2011
Until the 18th of September, the Petit Palais presents the work of Charlotte Perriand (1903-1999) and reveals for the first time the part played by photography in the creative process of this lady of design, today produced by Cassina.
She began using photography for her preliminary studies when she joined the Le Corbusier/Pierre Jeanneret studio as furniture design associate in 1928 (where she was by the way the only woman). Photography used as a visual notebook for the one who had “the eye in the shape of a fan”. Then, it will be a mean for observing the “laws of nature” – in the mountains, especially – and the urban context. This provided her with inspiration for her experiments with forms, materials and spatial arrangements.
The exhibition particularly emphasizes her passion for objects found in the course of her walks (with her friend Fernand Leger). A stone, a pierced piece of wood, … everything is a source of inspiration in their distancing of the rationalist spirit of the 1920s, these brought greater flexibility and formal freedom to her work. For example the banquette Tokyo designed in 1954 but inspired from a fish bone found in 1933!
The Petit Palais thus offers the opportunity to rediscover an artist alert to her natural and social setting, a free woman who opened the way for today’s women designers.
The exhibition comprises 380 photos and 70 items of furniture, including a suite that once belonged to Perriand herself.
Charlotte Perriand – From photography to design
Until the 18th of September
Petit Palais
Avenue Winston Churchill
75008 Paris
Tél. : + 33 (0)1 53 43 40 00
www.petitpalais.paris.fr
- Poster of the exhibition