Jean Prouvé

Background

Jean Prouvé was born on 8 April 1901 in Nancy, the second of seven children of the painter Victor Prouvé and the pianist Marie Duhamel. Wikipedia describes the family's circle of artists and craftspeople around the École de Nancy, whose aim was to link art with industry, and quotes him saying he was raised in a world of artists and scholars. After three years at the Nancy school of fine arts (1914-1917) he trained as a metalworker, first with the blacksmith Émile Robert and then in a Parisian metal workshop, and in 1923 he opened the first of his own workshops in Nancy. Vitra's biography dates his Nancy workshop to 1924 and says he founded his own factory in 1947 and left the company in 1953 after disagreements with the majority shareholders.

Signature Style

Le Corbusier called him a constructeur, a word for someone who joins architecture and engineering, and Prouvé called himself "a factory man". Wikipedia credits him with carrying manufacturing technology from industry into architecture, and notes that he set himself apart from the tubular-steel furniture of the Bauhaus by trusting sheet metal that is bent and pressed rather than welded. Vitra describes an output that runs from a letter opener and door and window fittings to lighting, furniture, prefabricated houses and modular building systems.

Notable Works

Wikipedia names the prefabricated steel holiday house BLPS (1937-1939), the Maison Tropicale prototypes for West Africa (1949-1951), the emergency house Maison des Jours Meilleurs (1954) and his own family house in Nancy, built in 1954. With the sculptor Alexander Calder he built the steel base of La Spirale for the UNESCO site in Paris in 1958. His 1924 Chaise inclinable is an early furniture design.

Legacy

In 1971 he chaired the jury that chose Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers for the Centre Pompidou. He died in Nancy on 23 March 1984, aged 82. Vitra says that in 1999 discussions with the Prouvé family led to an agreement allowing it to produce his furniture, and that it has issued re-editions with the family since 2002. The Vitra Design Museum holds what it calls the most extensive museum collection of Prouvé furniture, begun with an Antony chair that Rolf Fehlbaum bought in Paris, and staged the 2006 exhibition "Jean Prouvé: The Poetics of the Technical Object".