The founder of Garro Editions, a young textile house created in 2022, dreamed of it: to rediscover the work of the English artist Henry Moore to the French public. “The idea came to me five years ago, while I was researching textiles in England, explains Héloïse Garro. In the archives of the Henry Moore Foundation, I discovered around 5,000 drawings by the sculptor’s hand. »
The discussions she then undertook with the foundation resulted in the first edition on linen of six works produced between 1931 et 1973. As well as this new version of the Isokon chaise longue, by Marcel Breuer, equipped with a seat printed with a lithograph by Henry Moore, Six Reclining Figures with Buff Background, datant de 1963. A project that brings together two monuments of 20th century art and architecturee century, and celebrates their friendship.
The two men met in the mid-1930s. Bauhaus artists fled Germany, and a good number of them found refuge in London, including Marcel Breuer. Upon his arrival, he began working for Isokon, one of the UK’s first design manufacturers, established in 1931 by visionary entrepreneur Jack Pritchard.
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In 1935, at the latter’s request, Marcel Breuer thought about an experiment with molded plywood: it would be the Isokon lounge chair, which had become a best-seller of the house (still in activity and renamed Isokon Plus), and a flagship piece modernist design.
“At the time, Jack Pritchard loved Henry Moore’s work. He even gave the catalog of one of his exhibitions to all the residents of the Isokon Building. says Héloïse Garro. Marcel Breuer himself lived in this building, built at the request of Molly and Jack Pritchard to accommodate artists and intellectuals and inaugurated in 1934.
The stylized forms of Henry Moore, his monumental stretched silhouettes, lying on their sides, sometimes off-center, have also left their mark on European modernism. For the sculptor, the 1930s were those of the maturation of a style and its turn towards abstraction.
“Scientifically relaxing”
When he created the four-color lithograph Six Reclining Figures with Buff Backgroundthe artist is at the height of his glory. The 1950s passed, with its share of public orders. THE Reclining Figures) et Mother-and-Child (« mother and child ») conquered the modern world and notably took over the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, built between 1955 and 1958 by… Marcel Breuer (with Bernard Zehrfuss and Pier Luigi Nervi).
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