France – Saint-Paul-de-Vence
A legendary avant-garde "castle," a model of architectural simplicity with orthogonal lines, a "cubist and minimal castle" 1 The Villa Noailles, nestled in the hills above Hyères in the Var region, was a true design laboratory in the 1920s, foreshadowing a new art of living. Commissioned by Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles from the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, founder of the Union of Modern Artists, it was furnished by artisans advocating purism and functionalism, in line with the "less is more" philosophy of the leader of the modernist movement, Mies van der Rohe.
Rejected in its time for the simplicity of its lines, the furniture designed by the creators of the Modern Movement would have fallen into oblivion had it not been rediscovered and reissued by Andrée Putman in the late 1970s. In 1978, at the age of 53, the designer founded the company Ecart International to reissue this forgotten furniture, which she would use in most of her interior design projects. Building on her success, this grande dame of design brought back into the spotlight masterpieces by Eileen Gray, Pierre Chareau, Djo Bourgeois, Francis Jourdain, and Mallet-Stevens.
This is the story told to us, in association with the Villa Noailles – which is celebrating its centenary this year, as well as the twentieth anniversary of its contemporary art center – in one of the wings of the magnificent CAB Foundation located on the heights of Saint-Paul-de-Vence. There we see some key pieces from the Ecart catalog, originating from furniture that had disappeared or remained as drawings or prototypes, which, "resurrected" and reused by Andrée Putman, would become bestsellers in the 1980s: faced with the success she encountered with these re-editions and to meet the demand of some prestigious clients, she founded her interior architecture agency in 1984.
From the Morgans Hotel in New York to the Centre for Contemporary Visual Arts in Bordeaux, via the designs she created for Karl Lagerfeld, Yves Saint Laurent or Azzedine Alaïa, she used these re-editions from the 1920s in all corners of the world, always following the same refined line leading from classicism, made of measure and balance, to minimalism: « Removing colors. Making things disappear. Subtracting […] I believe this operation—subtraction—is at the heart of all my work. […] From a very young age, I bought paintings from artists who were far from established. To see them properly and to display them effectively, I needed to simplify the space that housed them. […] I established a balance between what must disappear and what must appear forcefully; it is within this space that I intervene […]”
- Katia Pecnik, “Villa Noailles: a château at the service of the avant-garde” in Modern Arcadia, ed. Archives of Modern Architecture (AAM editions), 2017
The CAB Foundation of Saint-Paul-de-Vence Founded in 2021 by Belgian collector Hubert Bonnet, nine years after the creation of its parent foundation in Brussels, the modernist 1950s building, renovated in the minimalist style of interior designer Charles Zana, is dedicated to showcasing international Minimal and Conceptual art. Through exhibitions and residencies, the Foundation presents the work of established, emerging, and historical artists influenced by Minimal and Conceptual art. Boasting an outdoor collection of Minimalist sculptures, a charming café-restaurant, and equally charming guest rooms, including an irresistible prefabricated house by Jean Prouvé furnished with pieces by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Charlotte Perriand, it is the perfect haven of peace in this busy region.
"Andrée Putman and the creators of the modern movement"
CAB Foundation
5766, Chemin des Trious, Saint-Paul-de-Vence
Until 29 October 2023