Jean Prouvé

Paris, 1901

Jean Prouvé was a 20th century French designer and architect that became a pioneer in the concept of prefabrication.

From his childhood he was immersed in a world of artists and academics, in which his father, Victor Prouvé, was an artist attached to l’Ecole de Nancy, who tried to unite art and industry and make it accessible to the masses. This together with the philosophy he preached as a member of the Union of Modern Artists (“We like logic, balance and purity”) will guide all his work.

Despite his artistic background, he defined himself as an iron craftsman, with a perfect knowledge of the craft and the material; he claimed to be a “blacksmith and not an artistic blacksmith”.

His works are the result of a constant dialectic between design and material, in which he leaves aside “aestheticism” as a factor of beauty to focus on an industrial and dynamic aesthetic, which coincided with the doctrine of the Union of Modern Artists of which Prouvé, along with Le Corbusier, Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand, was a founding member.

Being too innovative for his time, Jean Prouvé stands out today for his extreme modernity in which he represents a confluence of the most innovative technologies in automotive and aeronautics, together with a practically handcrafted operation.