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MIND OF THE ARTIST
There’s also a strong focus on her first and most famous piece of modernist
architecture, the villa E-1027, built in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in the south of France between 1926 and 1929 together with Romanian architect Jean Badovici, who was her partner at the time. The exhibition features a number of examples of furniture designed for E-1027. The Centre Pompidou’s Cloé Pitiot, curator of the exhibition, describes
Gray as not only an iconic art deco decorator and very important modernist architect, but also a significant painter. “She’s a total artist and this exhibition in Dublin would like to show Eileen Gray as a painter, a designer and an architect. Gray was born in Brownswood, Enniscorthy in 1878 to an aristocratic and artistic family. She studied painting at the Slade School of Art in London from 1900, and began to learn the lacquering technique from Dean Charles in Soho around the same time. She first moved to Paris in 1902 with some artist friends, attracted by the freer environment, according to Pitiot. Jennifer Goff, curator of furniture and Eileen Gray collections at the
National Museum of Ireland, notes that Gray “completely plunged into the avant garde”. She moved back to London for a time before settling in Paris in 1906. A year
later, she bought an apartment on rue Bonaparte, which remained her main home for the rest of her life. In 1910, she opened a studio with Seizo Sugawara, a Japanese expert in
decorative lacquer, and they collaborated for the next 20 years. In the same year, she set up a tapestry weaving studio with textile artist Evelyn Wyld, having learned carpet making techniques while travelling in the Atlas mountains. During the First World War, she and Sugawara moved to London. When she
returned to Paris she spent four years working on the complete redesign – everything from rugs to wall panelling – of Madame Mathieu Levy’s apartment in rue de Lota, for which she notably designed the Bibendum chair. In 1922 she opened Galerie Jean Désert, which sold her lacquer, carpets and furniture. “She was the first designer to use lacquer in a contemporary context,” says
‘She’s a total artist and this exhibition in Dublin would like to show Eileen Gray as a painter, a designer and an architect’
Cloé Pitiot, Centre Pompidou and curator of the Eileen Gray exhibition
Eileen Gray, Curved divan, 1929. Chrome-plated tubular steel, PVC-coated fabric. Centre Pompidou, Musée National D’art Moderne, Paris. Purchase, 1992
68 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 7 Autumn/Winter 2013
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