Eye of Art #4 : Jean Prouvé

A weekly series to share my art discovery with first the work that caught my eye...
This week is about architecture with the demountable house of Jean Prouvé. After the Second World War, France needed new houses for his population, it was the time of the Reconstruction. Jean Prouvé came with this idea of pre-fabricated houses and buildings. Clean lines, simple...

6 x 9 Demountable House, 300 x 900 x 680 cm

This house was sold to auction by Phillip's in April 2017 for 665,000 GBP. It was manufactured in 1944-45 by Les Ateliers Jean Prouvé at Nancy (France), maded in painted steel, corrugated aluminium, painted wood, glass. In one day, the house was installed and ready to be occupied by a family.

But unfortunately France preferred the concrete despite the admiration of Le Corbusier for these houses.

"The house of my dreams is made in a factory" - Jean Prouvé

WHO

Jean Prouvé (1901-1984), French architect and designer, was the son of Victor Prouvé, co-founder of the École de Nancy and the godson of Emile Gallé. He apprenticed blacksmiths in Paris and opened a small wrought iron forge in Nancy. But Prouvé found other use about sheet steel adapting it to furniture and pre-fabricated houses collaborating with Robert Mallet-Stevens, Le Corbusier or Charlotte Perriand.

Light Potence, 1952 (For the Office of Air France in Brazzaville (Congo)

Bureau Présidence, 1950 (vendu 363,000 EUR in 2016 by Sotheby's)

WHAT

With the exposition Jean Prouvé - Architecte des Jours Meilleurs (Architect of Better Days) in LUMA at Arles (France) until May 1st, you can (re)discover all the Jean Prouvé pre-fabricated buildings, 12 structures manufactured between 1939 and 1969. It's the first time that you can see all this construction in the same place.