CHARLOTTE PERRIAND/ ATELIER JEAN PROUVE UNIQUE

Provenance
Architectural Office, Avenue Marceau, PARIS
Hotel de Drouot, PARIS
Galerie 1950 Alan, PARIS

Exhibited
France 1950, Galerie 1950 Alan, PARIS

Literature
ARCHITECTURE D'AUJOURDHUI, no. 58, February 1955, illustrated n.p.
FRANCE 1950, exh. cat., Galerie 1950 Alan, PARIS, illustrated n.p

CHARLOTTE PERRIANDS BOOKCASE ROOM DIVIDER FOR JEAN SEBAG

Jean Sebag is best known for being the architect of La Maison de la Tunisie at the Cit Universitaire (campus) of Paris. When Sebag received the commission in 1948, as a member of the Group Espace he was able to put into practice the ideology of the Group, to unify art and architecture.

When Sebag moved his architecture agency to a new location on Avenue Monceau He knocked down all partition walls except one, and to decorate the interior he called upon his friends from La Maison de la Tunisie, including Charlotte Perriand. The polychrome tones of the interior, the white for the walls, blue for the floor and the oak, were specially studied to create an uplifting and agreeable atmosphere in the workplace.

The present lot, which was designed by Perriand for Sebag as a bookshelf/room divider, is similar to the bookshelf made for La Maison de la Tunisie, using tones and color schemes similar to those used by Sonia Delaunay and Nicolas Schffer. The present lot and the Tunisie model both have a large wooden plank, at 271/2in. (70 cm) high from the floor, which creates harmony as well as being functional to rest objects on. The Sebag bookcase can be seen asatransition between the design Perriand used in her Tunisie project in 1952, with a large bench and one-piece metal shelving cubes, and the Mexique project in 1954, which incorporates the same shelf system, but with cubes made of three interlocking pieces of metal (FIG. 3).

Perriand was especially happy with this type of furniture: I created a new proportion and responded to a need: to put objects, books and documents on a beautiful counter.