Eileen Gray, the drift toward modernism.

As we are changing the form of the presentation from class to class, i propose that:
1) Nicholas==> Biographical informations (please keep it short dude !)
2) Me==> An overview of Gray's style
3) Alex==> A review of Gray's main works
4) After an outstanding transition by Alex, Guillaume==> the E-1027 Villa

Then, briefly we can distinguish two maine periods in Eileen Gray's life 1)The Art Deco one and 2) The Modernist one

1/ Art Deco ==> Slade School + the influence of Sugarawa + her parisian experience = an Art Deco period, where she mastered non-figurative motives, lacqued furniture. The result and the most famous achievement of this time is the Mathieux-Levy flat (no picture avalaible). Hint of her style:

2) The modernist period: a radical shift !!!! Originality: she completly denied her previous work, saying that "many motives were not abstract but absurd - overloaded with insignificant colors, and blindly following a disgusting stream" (Caroline Constant's biography)

She kept the lacqued wood techniques (and the parisian inspiration), but it became more like this:

Following Rietveld (Mondrian/De Stijl) ==> Monochromes and clearly determined shapes (cf Rietveld's chair).
It was to follow simple rules of geometry and coloration, without being formal: result = the Bibendum Chair:
The second main point is an increasing interest in architecture: cf Guillaume
The transposition of her style of furnituring is the Modernism. If LeCorbusier was like the super-master but she followed mainly Jean Badovici. Glass/Steel/Structure - blurring boundaries in a way between pure utilitarism of LeCorbusier and the artistic approach of the Bauhaus (cf Mies van der Rohe).

Conclusion: a generation of migrants attracted by Paris, through two world wars, where restructurating stuffs with geomotry was destructurating conventional design.