Editions Norma – serie

Gaetano Pesce traces the visionary collaboration between the Italian designer and American entrepreneur Jay Chiat, founder of the advertising agency Chiat\Day. Through 500 images, rare archives, and previously unpublished interviews, this book explores the creation of Chiat\Day’s New York offices—true laboratories of the virtual office concept. Conceived in the 1990s, this groundbreaking project merges art, architecture, and technology, redefining the very notion of workspace.From Venice to New York, the book situates this adventure within the career of a leading figure of radical design, for whom humanity and diversity remain central to every form of creation. Gaetano Pesce offers a richly documented and visually striking journey into the world of a total artist whose influence continues to shape the way we think about work, space, and creativity today.Text in English and French.

"Abandoned, forgotten form is reborn in the arms of an all-embracing nature, an envelope within which the origin of the human being, of a society gives us a sensibility, a presence of a fertility." - Vincent DubourgA graduate of the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Vincent Dubourg is a designer and a plastic artist. In 2004, he caught the eye of Julien Lombrail, founder of the Carpenters Workshop Gallery, where he has been exhibiting since 2006. Present at major salons and shows - the Pavillon des Arts et du Design, Paris; Design Miami Basel - he has received many public commissions from institutions such as Galeries Lafayette, Swarovski, Vienna, the musée de la chasse et de la nature, Paris, and the Sketch restaurant in London, among others.Vincent says that he feeds himself on the capitals like Paris and New York, which he regularly visits, and digests them in his isolated studio in the Creuse department in France. There, he questions contemporary furniture through the prism of nature and the five elements, like a perfect control of metal. With him, buffet, table and chairs become hallucinatory objects shifting between sculpture and functional furniture. A major exhibit will be devoted to him at the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in New York in late 2017. Solo Show, Carpenters Workshop Gallery, New York, November 2017.

This exceptional anthology, which proposes a panorama of the evolution of crafts from 1945 to the present day, brings together a selection of over 70 texts from five continents. These texts are chosen and commented on by Chloé Braustein-Kriegel, a design specialist and critic, and Fabien Petiot, an art historian and designer.This new research is a genuine theoretical and practical tool for specialists and amateurs alike throughout the world. Calling on a huge network of experts, writers, critics, academics, journalists and artists, whose articles have been published in reviews such as Crafts Magazine, The Journal of Modern Art and The Journal of Design History, the authors present a diversity of viewpoints that permit the reader to go into depth on all the aspects of this multiform subject: the relationship between crafts and the many creation fields such as design and architecture, and the place of know-how in today's society. This anthology also makes it possible to place these contemporary questions in a historical perspective. A selection of authors: Charlotte Benton, Andrea Branzi, Alberto Cavalli, Garth Clark, Edmund Wim Delvoye, De Waal, Marie Douglas, Enzo Mari Stefano Micelli, Louise Schouwenberg, Patricia Woods.

From imperial Russia to the Rome of the 1960s, the work of architect, painter and scenographer André Beloborodoff (1886-1965) expresses his unique vision of the history of modernity. An enlightened Palladian, Beloborodoff designed palaces, châteaux and villas for Café Society patrons using modern construction techniques, such as reinforced concrete. The interior design of the Yusupov palace in Saint Petersburg, the Caulaincourt château in Picardy, and the Villa Pepoli for Maurice Sandoz in Rome - built at the same time as Le Corbusier's Cité radieuse - are witnesses to his timeless, stripped-down and refined classicism. He won the Prix de Rome in 1934, and subsequently spent many years living and working in Italy.Many of his architectural ideals are found in his metaphysical and surrealist paintings and watercolors, highly praised by Paul Valéry, Mario Praz, Henri de Régnier, and Jean-Louis Vaudoyer. His atmospheric vistas of sunken or vanished worlds recall the edifices that Beloborodoff, eternally rootless, was never able to build.Text in French.

Michel Buffet is known as a pioneer in the mid-century industrial design movement in France. His work embodies the aesthetics of the 'Thirty Glorious Years' of French design from 1945 to 1975, which he expressed elegantly in his signature shapes and colours. His career includes a 30-year association with Raymond Loewy at CEI (Compagnie d'Esthetique Industrelle), the founding of his own company (Vector Industrial Design), a range of elaborate public works and transportation projects, and his signature interior and lighting designs. His transportation projects include design work for planes (the Dessault Group Falcon and the Concorde) and trains, for the Caracas metro, the Hong Kong subway, the Channel Tunnel, Shell International service stations, and the French Navy.In the realm of furniture, he notably designed a modular kitchen, DF 2000, hailed by the Italian review Domus. His lighting fixtures from the 1950s - including the floor lamp B211 and wall sconce B206 - were initially issued by Luminalite, and have become popular classics which have been reissued by the company Lignes de démarcation.Text in English and French.

Must form still follow function, as Martin Gropius, Le Corbusier, and their followers proclaimed? Dysfunctional invites a reconsideration of the conventional relationship between artistic expression and functionality. In an exhibition organised by the Carpenters Workshop Gallery in the stunning setting of the Ca'd'Oro in Venice, site-specific works by 17 established and emerging artists explore the boundaries of art, architecture, and design. These contemporary artists draw on the rich heritage of Venetian craftsmanship and the museum's exceptional collection of Italian masterpieces to create a meaningful dialogue about the 20th century mantra of form following function. With work located in the realm between craft and art, each of the artists in the show challenges preconceptions about what is beautiful and what is useful, what is historical, and what is modern. Included here are site-specific installations and furniture-sculpture by Nacho Carbonell, Studio Drift, Vincent Dubourg and Virgil Abloh, organic benches by Wendell Castle and Mathieu Lehanneur, and inhabited clocks by Maarten Baas, among others.

Spanish-born photographer Fadia Ahma (b.1975) lives and works in Lebanon. Her poetic series of photographs of Beirut eloquently captures the street life of that resilient city; merchants on street corners, grocers, fishermen, bathers, street artists, collapsed buildings, new construction. She presents fragments of life through fragments of the city itself. This is the first monograph of her vibrant and intuitive work on the people and places of Beirut.She has been crisscrossing her city with a camera since 2003. District after district, house after house, she explores the complexity and humanity of Beirut and the Lebanese people. "I decided," she explains, "to follow an itinerary, which is always the same, so that I wouldn't disperse myself. It is my constancy that allows me to discover, to meld with this city." Fadia Ahmad's imagines her photographs as paintings, which mirror Beirut and capture the poetry of place and people which are nestled in the slightest details.Text in English and French.

Pierre Guariche (1926-1995) was a leading interior architect, furniture, and lighting designer in postwar France. He created a prolific body of work during what is known as the Thirty Glorious Years (1945-1975), a period of economic prosperity and high growth in France. He was an early adopter of industrial materials and production techniques that emerged during the 1950s, and is known for his remarkable lighting fixtures and simple, elegant furniture designs that could be manufactured on a large scale. He worked with innovative companies like Airborne, Steiner, and Pierre Disderot; he co-founded a design collective (Atelier de Recherche Plastique- ARP); and was the artistic director for the Meurop furniture company in Belgium. In advance of Charlotte Perriand in Les Arcs and Marcel Breuer in Flaine, he worked with the architect Michel Bezançon on the creation of La Plagne, the first comprehensive winter sports resort in France. Making use of unpublished archives, this book looks back on a rich itinerary of over 200 interior architecture and design projects, almost as many pieces of furniture, and a series of remarkable lighting fixtures (reissued today by Sammode) which shed light on the modernity and timeless elegance of this remarkable creator. Text in English and French.

After training as a graphic designer in Hungary, the plastic artist Vera Székely (1919-1994), a member of the Székely-Borderie ceramicist collective, tackled work in clay, metal, wood and glass to reach her artistic fulfillment in textiles.From this point on, Vera Székely acknowledged “swimming and dancing in space to leave a trace in it” with her ephemeral installations of bent felt, her stretched canvas structures and “braced sails” that would be exhibited throughout the world, notably at the Biennale internationale de la tapisserie, Lausanne (1981) the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou (1982), the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris (1985), the Lunds Konsthall, Sweden (1988). Text in English and French.

Nicolas Eekman (1889-1973) is the heir of the great creators of his native Flanders, from Jérôme Bosh to James Ensor, as well as one of the representatives of the School of Paris.Born in Brussels where he studied architecture, he turned to painting and exhibited for a few years in Holland before settling in Paris in 1921. Close to his compatriot Mondrian with whom he exhibited at the Jeanne Bucher gallery (1928), he is also closely linked to the artists Jean Lurçat, Marcoussis, Max Jacob, Lipchitz, and later with Moïse Kisling and Frans Masereel.Influenced by Cubism to which he devoted a few outstanding years, he gradually returned, in the 1930s, to realism and then from the 1950s turned to the fantastic, reviving the Flemish painting of the fifteenth and sixteenth century.Author of an abundant painted work, he is also a renowned draftsman, illustrator and engraver whose works have been collected by numerous print studios (Brussels, Hanover, Berlin, Hamburg, Basel, Budapest).Text in English and French.

A key figure in the Art Deco movement, artist Jean Dunand (1877-1942) stands out for his multiple talents as a sculptor, goldsmith, copper maker, but also lacquerer, bookbinder and decorator. After having excelled in finishing hammer-mounted vases and brassware, he met Seizo Sugawara in 1912 who led him to become passionate about lacquer, which he made his signature on both his vases and his panels, furniture and bindings.At the head of an important workshop, he participated in the major international exhibitions of his time, in Paris in 1925, 1931 and 1937, in New York in 1939, and was regularly exhibited at the Georges Petit gallery and at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs. His singularity and the quality of his creations lead him to become one of the most sought-after portrait painters, immortalising personalities in fashion and the arts such as Jeanne Lanvin, Louise Boulanger, Joséphine Baker as well as from the world of finance such as the Lazards, Carnegie or Louis-Dreyfus.Jean Dunand also worked on remarkable sets in France and the United States such as the music salons of Solomon R. Guggenheim, the apartments of Madame Agnès or Templeton Croker, as well as on the shipyards of the Atlantic and Normandy liners which will crown a rich career of more than two thousand works, presented in a repertoire at the end of the book.Text in French.

In line with the works on decorators of the 1940s, '50s, '60s, and '70s, this book plunges us into the world of '80s and '90s. These have witnessed unprecedented experiments in the world of design and architecture. Composed of a rich introduction which gives a synoptic vision and 38 monographs that describe its many faces, this book makes and exceptionally creative period intelligible, and reveals through an abundant iconography, often unpublished, its formidable aesthetic richness.A new generation of designers stands out; among them Shiro Kuramata, Philippe Starck, Ron Arad, Bob Wilson, Elizabeth Garouste and Mattia Bonetti. All regenerate creation by refusing the elitism of their predecessors and by favouring the use of new materials. Some turn to recovery, such as the Creative Salvage group, and offer inventive and provocative furniture thanks to welding and assembly. Others, gathered in Italy around Ettore Sottsass and Memphis, combine unexpected colours and patterns to the playful use of plastic laminate. Sliding until the end of the '90s, the achievements presented in this book mark the desire for a dialogue between artistic references with a new relationship to the industrial aspect, at the dawn of the 21st century and its technological innovations.Text in English and French.

The fisherman's hut and the arcachonnaises, magnificent residences of the Belle Époque, have shaped the coastline of the Arcachon basin, from the Ville d'Hiver d'Arcachon to the tip of Cap Ferret. Following in the footsteps of Art Deco architects such as Roger-Henri Expert and Le Corbusier, a new generation of designers from the early 1950s went on to leave their mark, sometimes modernist, sometimes brutalist, on the Basin's landscape, with a series of villas and houses that, alongside the rare collective dwellings, gave it its distinctive present-day appearance. Concerned to preserve the natural setting, the architects have competed in ingenuity to fit into this grandiose and fragile territory. Among them, the Salier-Courtois-Lajus-Sadirac team from Bordeaux, Raphaëlle and Jacques Hondelatte and Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal (Pritzker 2021), have invented an art of living here, with architecture that respects the environment, which has helped to make this unique natural site between the dunes, the pine forest and the ocean better known and loved.Text in French.

Oriental Lifestyle will take you on a journey that explores astonishing artistic and architectural worlds, captured by a poetic eye. Like an enchanter, Guillaume de Laubier brings the ochre of the desert alive and highlights the splendour and wonders of palaces and residences rich in ancestral knowledge and history. We discover the beautiful diversity of the Orient-Occident alliance, which has given birth to an innovative and colourful style of decoration. We stop in front of the skyscrapers, museums, and modern villas that are revolutionising architecture and design in the Arab world.This is a book that celebrates the diversity of the art of living, architecture and design in the East today, from Egypt to Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and also Mauritania and Morocco.Text in English and French.

Nudity, lasciviousness, sensuality, provocation, shamelessness, or obscenity. During the 19th century, eroticism takes on a new place in Western visual culture, in particular thanks to the development of reproduction such as photography, press or lithography.Result of long and meticulous research, this book reviews the major reflections carried out on the theme of nudity in the field of art history and the history of sensibilities. It studies the reception of nudity in France, based on documentary and iconographic sources renewed (little-known works, drawings and photographs, newspapers, archives, texts of laws) and allows us to better understand this history of erotic art of the nineteenth century, long perpetuated by the sole taste of description.By placing the works in their context, by comparing expressions and aesthetics, and studying visual culture of time, Claire Maingon opens up new fields of reflection, while allowing to discover unknown or forgotten artists such as Broc, Gavarni, Dubufe, Galimard, Ranft, Eakins, alongside the big names in the history of 19th century, David, Ingres, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Rodin.Text in French.

Graduated from Ecole Boulle and ENSAD, Henri Quillé (1928-2020), settled on the island of Formentera (Balearic Islands) in 1972. There, he built for a mainly international clientele 30 houses of great consistency and is part of both principles derived from vernacular know-how and in those of the great masters of modernity. He says to "pursue" the local architecture, in particular by making extensive use of the Catalan vault, reducing openings to protect against the heat, covering the exterior walls with a lime plaster and sand. A pioneer of ecological housing, he will build a dozen self-sufficient houses.With the architects Felix Julbe and Raimon Torres, he collaborated on the regulatory plan and planning work on the island of Formentera from 1973 to 1976. Combining plans, period photographs and contemporary shots, this book allows this architect and his houses to be given their rightful place in the history of 20th century architecture.Text in French and Spanish.

Creator and architect of the emblematic Maison de verre in Paris, Pierre Chareau left behind a rich and coherent body of work, a "Chareau style" that places him as much in the modernist movement as in avant-garde thinking that embraces a world of new forms and materials.This first volume looks back at his biography, his decisive encounters with artistic movements such as cubism and primitive arts, and with leading figures such as Nicolas de Staël, Jeanne Bucher, Jacques Lipchitz, Pablo Picasso, Rose Adler, Max Jacob, Jean Lurçat and Rob Mallet-Stevens, who remained loyal to him throughout his short life.It traces his career, from his beginnings as a draughtsman at Waring & Gillow to his emergence as an independent designer; it details his participation in the Salons d'automne, the Salons des artistes décorateurs, the Groupe des 5 and the UAM, which set the tone for the modernity that thrilled the rest of the world; his work on Marcel L'Herbier's film sets; and his departure for the United States in 1940. It also introduces us to the collector and gallery owner, surrounded by artists such as Braque, Ernst, Gris, Léger, Lurçat, Masson, Modigliani, Motherwell and de Staël. The boutique he set up with his wife Dollie, on rue du Cherche-Midi, exhibits not only his own works but also the creations they produced: fabrics by Hélène Henry, rugs by Jean Burkhalter and Charchoune...Richly illustrated with almost 500 visuals, this first volume offers a complete overview of Dollie's furniture and lighting production, drawing on several iconographic collections (Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris, Moma, New York).Text in French.

Pierre Chareau, aménagements et architecture is an unprecedented synthesis of almost 80 interior architecture projects (1908-1938), both private and public, and his architectural projects (1925-1950).It reveals the evolution of Pierre Chareau's approach to interior design, from his beginnings as a decorator integrating his furniture into existing spaces, to the advent, over the course of his projects, of a resolutely architectural approach to space, in which furniture comes to life and becomes architecture in its own right. Listing all of these projects, it provides a detailed, illustrated analysis of twenty-five of them, most of which were commissioned by three families: the Dalsaces, the Bernheims and the Dreyfus.This second volume reveals the designer's long-term commitment to architecture. It looks back at his involvement in the CIAM, the Société des architectes modernes and the Rassemblement des architectes, as well as his collaboration with the magazine L'Architecture d'aujourd'hui. It offers a critical analysis of Pierre Chareau's work as an architect, deciphering the 13 projects he worked on in France from 1923 to 1938, and in the United States from 1945 to 1950, from Djemil Anik's cottage to Robert Motherwell's studio in East Hampton. Finally, this book offers an in-depth analysis of the Glass House. By drawing up a portrait of Jean Dalsace and his wife Annie, it helps us to understand the central role played by those who commissioned the project. It looks back at the architectural and societal context of the time, explaining the importance of light and hygiene in the Maison de verre. The building site and its vicissitudes are described, followed by a description of the main principles behind the design of the house, and an analysis of its volumes and spaces.Text in French.

In 2015, the Vendôme column regained its initial splendour thanks to a long restoration campaign supported by the Vendôme committee and particularly the Ritz.During the dismantling of the scaffolding, David Bordes took exceptional shots of all the column plates. Published here for the first time, these 450 photographs form a fascinating and totally new corpus: the details of the battle scenes, the military costumes, the landscapes which constitute the setting of the battle of Austerlitz allow one to discover the column as it had never been revealed.Based on the shots of David Bordes, but also on paintings, old photographs, period documents, this widely illustrated art book in exceptional format and workmanship brings the history of the column to life, its sources, its destruction, its restoration, and also describes the moving history of the daily life of the Grande Armée during the Austerlitz campaign.

The architect Paul Tissier (1886-1926) turned his short life into a multi-faceted artistic adventure. A student at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he founded the Association symphonique, he became president of the famous Quat'z'Arts ball. His talent as a watercolourist and draughtsman made him a witness to the ruins of the 1914-1918 war. Whether in the devastated regions or on the Côte d'Azur, he developed a unique catalogue of modular houses inspired by the region, combining traditional architecture with modern design. In 1923, Tissier was entrusted by the Société des grands hôtels de Nice with the organisation of exceptional festivities based on themes such as Russia, the Far East, Ancient Rome and Latin America, as well as underwater kingdoms and many other fantasies revolving around childhood, fashion and cubism. With his wife Gisèle, he was responsible for both the scenography and the staging: splendidly coloured painted canvases, extravagant costumes, spectacular dances, processions, naval jousts, fireworks and illuminations... A shooting star, Paul Tissier created almost 100 festivities across Europe in three years, before suddenly passing away. This first monograph draws on the 400 set elements and 2,000 graphic documents that survive in his archive, taking us to the heart of the excesses of the Roaring Twenties.Text in French.

This monograph on the sculptor François Pompon is unpublished in the editorial landscape. It traces the history and work of the artist. The book has two parts, with Pompon’s books of accounts: a bilingual illustrated biography, followed by the repertoire of works. Resolutely modern, François Pompon vivified the animal art of the early 20th century, by his original conception of the form and the emotion produced. However, he devoted most of his life to composing for other sculptors, until he began to study animals by choice and taste. Drawing on the principles of antiquity while challenging the conventions of traditional statuary, he created a realistic, suggestive and simplified style. Polar Bear carries the sculptor’s career to its peak and is today its symbol. Pompon represents the animal in its daily life, for itself and without staging. He finds the balance between realism, truth and abstraction of unnecessary details. The surfaces are polished and round, leading to a soothing and understandable beauty at first glance. The result of a long manual and experimental work, this creative impulse leads François Pompon to new masterpieces sublimating the animal world. Bear, wild boar, hippopotamus, owl, mole or partridge, the animals of Pompon are touched by the love that emerges.Text in English and French.

Published on the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and the 200th anniversary of the deciphering of the Rosetta stone, this book responds to the ever-growing enthusiasm and curiosity for Egyptomania.This concept refers to a collective imagination which was nurtured throughout the 19th and 20th centuries by archaeological digs and exploratory trips. These key discoveries were crucial for creation and particularly for the Art Deco artists who found their inspiration in Egyptian lines and patterns.Art Déco & Egyptomanie explores the origins and functioning of this cultural and artistic movement shaped by many fields: architecture, cinema, sculpture, popular art, theatre and fashion.Art Déco & Egyptomanie comes with an explicit and previously unseen iconography.Text in French.

Chosen for the 59th Venice Biennale, to represent contemporary creation at the Lebanese pavilion Ayman Baalbaki is a Lebanese artist born in Beirut in 1975. He first trained at the Institute of Fine Arts of the university Lebanese school in Beirut, then at the National School of Decorative Arts in Paris. Five years after his arrival in France, he received the silver medal in painting at the Francophone Games and then participated in several exhibitions worldwide. Lebanon, France, Great Britain, Argentina, Egypt and Niger are all countries that welcome the works of the artist.His productions of the last 10 years have been compiled through this unpublished work, published in French, English and Arabic. The authors endeavour to decipher his paintings and installations, crossed by societal issues specific to Lebanon: war, abortive revolt, political and financial bankruptcy, the tragedy of the port of Beirut or even pandemic. The artist paints anonymous portraits of his contemporaries, which have today become symbols of the Middle East. It represents the city, its buildings, erected, but also in ruins. His art is vibrant, dynamic and textured.Text in English, French and Arabic.

A real mirror of 20th century creation, Chess Design presents an exceptional documentation on chess games made by artists, designers, architects, and craftsmen: chessboards themselves, but also artist's drawings, execution plans and photographs of archives.By presenting nearly 300 of these chessboards chronologically, the author offers a new perspective on the history of art and its evolution. Art Nouveau, Secession, Surrealism, Fluxus, Pop Art, most of the great movements that are born and follow one another in the Fine Arts find an echo with these chessboards and the 16 pieces that animate them. These chess games also reflect the evolution of techniques and materials used during this period: wood, glass, ceramics will give way, from the 1950s, to steel, plastic and composite materials.At the border between the plastic arts and the decorative arts, these chessboards are made by big names in the art scene, design or architecture – Alexandre Rodchenko, Jean-Michel Frank, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, or, more recently, Yoko Ono, Robert Filliou, Yayo Kusama, Victor Vasarely, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry or Damien Hirst – as by anonymous people. The synthesis offered by the author constitutes a valuable and innovative historian's work, supported by iconography that is both rich and mostly unpublished.Text in English and French.

Modern Painting in Egypt is an invitation to journey through the Egyptian art scene of the 20th century, spotlighting many of its major painters and their role in shaping Egypt's cultural heritage. This two-volume edition revives the book by Aimé Azar, a noted specialist of modern Egyptian art, first published in 1961 by Éditions Nouvelles and long out of print. Expanded and enriched, it gives readers a comprehensive understanding of this period in art history through texts and imagery of exceptional quality. The book is divided into seven chapters, followed by more than 90 biographies of Egyptian and foreign artists, presented chronologically in volume 2 and spanning 40 years of modern Egyptian art. A corpus of more than 600 paintings and drawings illustrates the book, allowing readers to grasp the essence of Egyptian painting and the full range of its nuances. Translated and reprinted in Arabic in 2006, it is now published in English to give the subject international reach.

Nestor Perkal has been multiplying his activities as an artist since the 1970s. He is indeed simultaneously a designer of furniture, objects and lightings, an interior architect, a scenographer, a curator and an art director. This book is the first monograph made about his work and aims to chart the different steps of his extraordinary career.In 1978, Nestor Perkal left his native land, Argentina, to settle in France. He first thrived in Paris as an independent designer, creating original furniture. At the same time, he opened a gallery and was the first to represent Memphis. His creations were displayed at the exhibition Life with colours of the Cartier Foundation in 1985. Then, he moved to Limoges where he lead the Craft, a research centre about the art of ceramic making.An artistic community gathered around him. He worked with many creators, designers, artists, but also manufacturers, sponsors and collectors. Having grown as an artist through time, Nestor Perkal played and is still playing a crucial part in promoting and producing the work of contemporary designers, architects and artists.Text in French.

As one of the key players of modern jewellery in the '20s, Paul Brandt worked with the most famous jewellers of his time, like Fouquet or Sandoz.He followed eclectic studies in Paris (jewellery, painting, sculpture, medals and stones engraving, chiselling, etc) and finally decided to specialise in jewellery design. With his first creations he joined the art nouveau movement before focusing on an art deco style. He took part in the International Exhibition of Decorative Art of 1925 both as an artist and a jury member. Paul Brandt considered his jewellery as works of art in their own right and displayed them during exhibitions where the scenography kept getting more innovative. From the '30s, he extended his activity to interior design.This monograph displays the talent of this major artist who left his mark in France and abroad. Recounting his whole career, it highlights the extent of Paul Brandt’s skills, not only in jewellery but also in medal making, decoration and interior design.Text in French.

Born in Milan and trained at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne, Nanda Vigo (1936-2020) made a name for herself in the 1960s with her cross-disciplinary approach to art, architecture and design. An important figure in the Italian avant-garde art scene, she has always favoured experimentation and exploration. From 1959, she frequented Lucio Fontana's studio, before becoming close to the artists Piero Manzoni and Enrico Castellani, who founded the Azimuth gallery in Milan. It was during this period that she discovered the artists and venues of the ZERO movement in Germany, the Netherlands and France. Between 1964 and 1966, she took part in numerous ZERO exhibitions in Europe; in 1965, she organised the legendary Zero Avantgarde exhibition in Lucio Fontana's studio in Milan. In 1971, she received the New York Award for Industrial Design for the Golden Gate lamp produced by Arredoluce, and completed one of her most emblematic projects for the Casa Museo Remo Brindisi in Lido di Spina. In 1976 she won the first Saint-Gobain prize for glass design, and in 1982 she took part in the 40th Venice Biennale. This book accompanies the exhibition Nanda Vigo, l'espace intérieur at Madd Bordeaux, which presents the artist's work through immersive installations. It looks at architecture, art and design as fields of total creation, to give us the opportunity to see, perceive and feel all the dimensions of space.Text in English and French.

Jean Fautrier (1989-1964) was a major 20th century artist. Trained at the Royal Academy of Arts and influenced by J.M.W. Turner, he was quickly noticed by the collector Jeanne Castel in 1923. At first, his style was figurative and played on contrasts of light. He expertly harnessed the essence of reality in order to transfigure it, redefining the genres of landscape painting, still lifes and nudes (especially in his series of dark works) during the inter-war period. A few years later, his approach underwent a radical shift and became much more abstract. He launched the “Informalist” art movement, playing with pictorial materials and combining different substances to create visions of an extraordinary material quality. Close to the great intellectual figures of his time, including Jean Paulhan, Paul Éluard, Francis Ponge, René Char and André Malraux, Fautrier never ceased producing remarkably powerful and politically resonant works, as is attested by his major series Otages (1943-1945), Objets (1947-1948) and Partisans (1956). In 1960, he was awarded the first prize for painting at the Venice Biennale. Boasting an exceptionally exhaustive iconography, this first ever comprehensive annotated catalogue of Jean Fautrier’s paintings includes the technique, origin, exhibitions and bibliography for each work. It is supplemented with a detailed biography, technical analyses and authoritative scientific texts, as well as transcriptions of interviews and radio broadcasts from Fautrier’s time.Text in English and French.