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SERGE MOUILLE, 1922-1988 Rare and important "Tres

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SERGE MOUILLE, 1922-1988

Rare and important "Tres Grand Signal" floor lamp, ca. 1963 Aluminum, painted iron.  Manufactured by Ateliers Serge Mouille, France. 79 ½ in. (201.9 cm.) high

Provenance: Delorenzo 1950, New York

Literature: Alan and Christine Counord, Serge Mouille, Luminaires, 1953-1962, Paris, 1983, p. 45; Anthony Delorenzo, ed., Jean Prouve/Serge Mouille, New York, 1985, front cover and pp. 90, 150, 161 and 169; Pierre Emile Pralus, Serge Mouille a French Classic, Saint Cyr au Mont d'Or, 2006, pp.  220 and 224

A recurrent bout with tuberculosis in 1959 forced Serge Mouille into alpine convalescence. The interruption lasted two years. When he returned to work, gone were the kinetic lamps of the previous decade: the shell shucks and batted eyes, the rotations of Saturn. As Mouille slowed so did his forms. "What humor in all his work, what gaity!" wrote Jean Prouve, fellow metal master. But the mood changed. Mouille's insect articulations, alert on spindle legs, walked away. Youthful flirtations matured—no more swinging sconces. In their place reined "Les Colonnes," geometric floor lamps first exhibited in 1962 at the Salon des Arts Menagers. The statuesque "Tres Grand Signal," last and largest of the series, comprises a fluorescent tube and an incandescent bulb caged in brushed aluminum. (In 1964 Mouille stopped all production of his lamps.) "Colonne" translates variously as column, spine, or tower. Regardless the precise definition, the name implies solid support (stolid too) and resolution in light of life's frailties. Mouille overthrew the fitful arabesques of nature, his earlier flames and corollas, with the blunt certainty of architecture. "Tres Grand Signal" rises like a skyscraper—or a cenotaph.

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