PIASA will present at auction on Wednesday 20th of June important pieces of a key figure in XXth century French design : Pierre Chapo.
Pierre Chapo was born on July 23th 1927 in a family of craftsmen and grew up first in Paris to move afterwards in the countryside town of Vierzon. After a first attempt at painting, he discovers woodworking early in his career. He enters the Architecture course of the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1947. He travels a great deal during in studies in Scandinavian countries, in the United States, in Central America and in Germany on the occasion of his military service. Him and his wife, Nicole Lormier, open their gallery in 1957 and their own manufacturing workshop in Clamart, a parisian suburb. They move in 1966 to the French town of Gordes, in the Luberon area. Commissioned by Samuel Beckett, his "Godot" bed design (1959) – named as a tribute to the writer’s famous play – was created during his parisian years. His furniture creations summon altogether architecture, geometry and symbols as they are inspired by the Classical Antiquity masters, the experiments of the Bauhaus or the researches of Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. His T22 coffee table design - also called « Eye » - or his B18B revolving bookcase, in metal and elm, and his S34A chairs illustrate these different sources of inspiration. Architectural clarity can also be found in the T20B table or in the S15 Chair.
Lot 143 - Pierre Chapo (1927-1987)
Modèle T22 dit Œil, Table basse
Sold 13 000 €
Pierre Chapo’s designs from the 1950s to the 1970s are structured around combining domestic life functionalism and balancing proportions. They lead to new creative paths around the end of the 1970s. The "Chlacc" system – standing for the French "Construction homogène lamellée assemblée collée clouée" (Homogeneous glue-laminated wood construction) – is a veneer wood technique with a reinforced resistance and an original aesthetic design patented in 1979. Conceived shortly after, the "Go" system structures furniture from flat surfaces of solid wood. It is the last of Pierre Chapo’s research as he passes away in January 1987 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis disease.
Lot 144 - Pierre Chapo (1927-1987)
Modèle B18B, bibliothèque tournante
Sold 9 100 €
Despite the diversity of his references and his work evolutions during his long career, some trends appear in the French designer’s work : "Pierre Chapo developped a personal signature, never overstated, and which owes its singularity to the association between the raw, radical expression of the wood and the mastery of unerringly sophisticated and refined designs. His work clearly belongs to the legacy of the Modern movement, but owes its specificity to this balance achieved between rawness and sophistication. "
Lot 152 - Pierre Chapo (1927-1987)
Modèle T20B, Table
Sold 26 000 €
Hugues Magen in New York, Magen H. Gallery, Pierre Chapo, A Modern Craftsman, Nov-dec. 2017.
