Product Description
Hector Guimard for Maison Coilliot / Art Nouveau glazed lava tile 1898
HECTOR GUIMARD (1867-1942) France
MAISON COILLIOT Lille, France
Tile c. 1898
Fired and glazed lava with abstract whiplash motifs in various tones of aqua blue on the obverse and a partial graphic on the reverse with polychrome floral and linear details.
Marks: 16 (on top of tile)
French architect Hector Guimard (1867-1942) realized the decorative possibilities of glazed lava, a substance made from mixing pulverized lava with clay when he built a villa for Louis Coillot, (1898-1900) a ceramics manufacturer in Lille who monopolized the distribution of the material. Guimard sided the entire facade of Maison Coilliot in lava stone.
***A related glazed lava tile from the Castel Henriette is in the Collection of the Musee d’Orsay.
The Maison Coilliot is an Art Nouveau house located on 14, rue de Fleurus in Lille, France. Louis Coilliot, a French ceramic entrepreneur, was fond of enameled lava and wanted to popularize the technique. To do so, Coilliot commissioned Hector Guimard, an architect he’d met at the 1897 fair La Céramique et tous les arts du feu, (“Ceramic Arts & Glass Making”), to apply the technique to his house’s façade. Coilliot’s factory and warehouse were located to the rear of his house, and therefore the façade held a double
purpose, both decorating the front of his home and advertising his business.
For more information see: Hector Guimard, 1867-1942: Architektur in Paris um 1900 (Munich: Museum Villa Stuck, 1975)
H: 25 1/2″ x W: 14″ x D: 9/16″
Hector Guimard for Maison Coilliot / Art Nouveau glazed lava tile 1898
PIERRE BOUCHER (1908-2000) France
Propeller 1935
Signed: WB – 7252; Photo Pierre Boucher (ink stamp); DBoucher (ink signature)
Provenance: Gene Prakapas Gallery, New York, 1978.
H: 7 1/16” x W: 9 ¼” (unframed)
H: 14 11/16” x 16 11/16” (framed)
Pierre Boucher came to photography as a result of the Nouvelle Vision and he explored photography as an experiment on all levels, photograms, collages, solarization and superimposition. He had a natural curiosity and a cultivated and sporty demeanor that led him to produce work as diverse as surrealist nudes and well-constructed advertisements. Whether it be in documentary photography or industrial photography, Pierre Boucher always awakens an empathy and a feeling of closeness with his subjects in the spectator.
Pierre Boucher got his start in advertising, taking his inspiration from the graphic techniques of the modernists in the field and contributing to the transformation of the advertising photo into a work of art. He used photomontage to make his work more striking and effective, making unnerving and astonishing.
Boucher’s nudes, on the other hand, use no technical prowess whatsoever. After the war the movement for freedom of the body led him to reconsider social models. Pierre Boucher revisited the female and male nude from several angles. Around 1931, he did his first nude photos under the umbrella of the “ New Objectivity ” : the image was boxed, the frame strict, the bodies freed from their faces. From 1933 onwards his nudes became surrealist inspired by the work of Man Ray. He then moved on to neo-classical nudes. In studio or in natural light his Apollonian nude aimed above all for beauty and harmony.