Objects of Desire - Surrealism and Design
@ Vitra Design Museum, Vitra Design Museum - Germany
Gufram takes part to Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924 – Today, a major exhibition of Vitra Design Museum that offers a comprehensive look at the dialogue between Surrealism and design. For the first time, it will unveil the extent to which Surrealism has influenced design of the past 100 years – from furniture and interiors to graphic design, fashion, and photography. The exhibition will include works by Gae Aulenti, BLESS, Achille Castiglioni, Giorgio de Chirico, Le Corbusier, Salvador Dalí, Dunne & Raby, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Ray Eames, Front, Frederick Kiesler, Shiro Kuramata, René Magritte, Carlo Mollino, Isamu Noguchi, Meret Oppenheim, Man Ray, Iris van Herpen, and many others.
Objects of Desire - Surrealism and Design
@ Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein - German
28 September 2019 – 19 January 2020
@ CaixaForum, Barcelona - Spain
27 February 2020 – 27 September 2020
@ CaixaForum, Madrid - Spain
12 November 2020 – 21 March 2021
The exhibition begins with an examination of Surrealism from the 1920s to the 1950s in which the crucial role that design played in the movement’s evolution becomes apparent.
The second section of the exhibition shows the ways in which Surrealists explored the archetypes of everyday objects and undermined the codes of meaning of a world we thought we knew. Many designs by the Italian Radical Design movement resemble the puzzling, decontextualized object fragments artists such as of Giorgio de Chirico. It is the case of Capitello (1972) by Studio 65, the Gufram chaise longue that follows the dimensions and the shapes of the columns of the Erechteion in the Acropolis in Athens: this monumental seat simulates the aspect of the Ancient Greece marble and is in contrast with the softness and lightness of polyurethane, which guarantees comfort and ergonomics.
MAgriTTA (1970) could not miss in this exhibition: the green apple and the black bowler hat, recurrent figurative elements in the works of René Magritte, are assembled by the visionary imagination of Sebastián Matta, in order to create a sculpture-armchair, homage to Surrealism.
One of the most iconic Gufram’s domestic sculpture has been enclosed also in the leading image of the exhibition: Bocca®, the original 1970 lips-shaped couch, only by Gufram's, designed in 1970 by Studio 65 and today available also in 25 new colours and in an unprecedented, more material and structured fabric. The visitor can find also Sassi (Stones), designed by Piero Gilardi for Gufram in 1968, a product that become bucolic seats or decorative elements.
