Lot 95: GUNNAR AAGAARD ANDERSEN, 1919 - 1982

GUNNAR AAGAARD ANDERSEN, 1919 - 1982 PORTRAIT OF MY MOTHER'S CHESTERFIELD, RARE FAUTEUIL, 1963-1964 Quantity: 1 'Portrait of my Mother's Chesterfield'', a rare and important polyurethane foam chair by Gunnar Aagaard Andersen, 1963-1964 hauteur : 80 cm (31 1/2 in.) largeur : 140 cm (55 1/8 in.) profondeur : 103 cm (40 1/2 in.)

Pour un autre fauteuil :
Formless Chairs, MAK, Vienna, 2009
Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich, 2010

Arthur Drexler, `The Andersen Armchair', Museum of Modern Art, vol. no. 2, Winter 1974-1975, pp. 2-3
Mobilia, no. 309, 1982, cover and p. 6
Martin Eidelberg, Design 1935-1965: What Modern was, catalogue d'exposition, éd. Abrams, New York, 1991, p. 294-295
The Furniture Collection, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2009, pp. 60, 95, 343
Volker Albus, Thomas S. Bley et alii, Meubles modernes, 150 ans de design, éd. H. F. Ullmann, Mühlenbruch, 2009, p. 415
Dietmar Rubel, Sebastian Hackenschmidt, Formless Furniture, éd. Hatje Cantz, Berlin, 2009, cover, p. 2, 11-35
David Hanks, The Century of Modern Design, éd. Flammarion, Paris, 2010, p. 228

Gunnar Aagaard Andersen's work fails to fit into pigeonholes, both in terms of what he produced and the style in which he worked. Andersen was simultaneously well-known as an artist, sculptor and architect as well as a designer. As a true polymath, his work continues to fight against being categorised, but its impact is just as striking today as when it was produced. The current lot ranks amongst his rarest designs and is a design icon of the 20th century.

In 'Portrait of my Mother's Chesterfield' Andersen produced a chair made entirely of one material, without any form of internal structure, using a method of manufacture that would lend itself to factory production and also to solo production, by a craftsman working alone. As each is made by hand each is unique, differing in form, structure and colour.

This chair is the first of only thirteen made by the artist, of which twelve now survive. Of the other eleven pieces, seven are in international museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Stedilijk Museum, Amsterdam and the Danish Design Museum, Copenhagen. Two, including the only extant sofa (one other sofa being destroyed shortly after creation), are still in the collection of the designer's family. This is the first of these extraordinary objects to appear on the international auction market.

"The polyurethane is a material with its own nature. In polyurethane furniture this is more determining than my aesthetic sense and participation, the polyurethane is pureed on the factory floor as a liquid, which then very quick foams up many times its own volume with a cell structure, that become smaller and smaller and finely collapse in a skin of a leather character. The many layers with varied cell dimension are like the spring and winter structure of trees and stabilize the whole chair. The chairs are without any skeleton and without any Covering. A Synthetic Material that has been cultivated to one specific purpose (mattresses) is, by use of its characteristics and foils, turned into a quality product that is close to natural materials and nature."
Gunnar Aagaard Andersen, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, 1977

We are grateful to Jeppe Aagaard Andersen for his assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.

Ancienne collection de l'artiste

Dans la famille depuis l'origine