The design collection of the Centre Pompidou (National Museum of Modern Art)

The Centre Pompidou is renowned for having the 1st collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe. The history of architecture and design is very much intertwined with the evolution of modern art, disciplines intersect, artists exchange and influence each other. This is why the Musée National d'Art Moderne also has a leading design collection. In 1991, Dominique Bozo, then director of the Centre Pompidou, decided to endow the cultural institution with a first-rate heritage collection devoted to design. Today, the Centre Pompidou's design collections are among the most important in the world. They include nearly 8,000 works, representing 900 designers, and range from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. We have chosen to present exceptional works from the Centre Pompidou's collections, representative of the evolution of ideas and concepts that have shaped the history of modern and, closer to home, contemporary design.

To make our choice, we have highlighted currents, eminent personalities, strongly represented in the Centre's collections. Let's start with the beginning of the 20th century with exceptional pieces gathered around the French artists of the U.A.M. (Union des Artistes Modernes, 1929)

It is no coincidence that the Centre Pompidou has impressive French modern holdings around the major figures of the U.A.M. In 2018, it devoted an exhibition to this movement entitled, "UAM, une aventure moderne," making a point: that of twisting the idea that it was not Art Deco that blew a wind of modernity at the beginning of the previous century, but the U.A.M.

A new generation of creators and designers was emerging at the beginning of the twentieth century to put an end to the bourgeois obsequiousness of decoration and furniture inherited from Art Nouveau and Art Deco. The first steering committee formed by Robert Mallet-Stevens included Francis Jourdain, René Herbst, Hélène Henry and Raymond Templier, as well as personalities such as Sonia Delaunay, Fernand Léger, Jean Carlu, Pierre Chareau, Jean Prouvé, Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Charlotte Perriand or Eileen Gray.

It was a wind of modernism that blew across Europe in this first third of the 20th century. The creators of the U.A.M. in France, but also the teachings of the famous Bauhaus School in Germany (1919-1933), and the Dutch movement De Stijl. The Centre Pompidou of course has iconic pieces from this period around (among others) Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Gerrit Rietveld.

A major figure of Italian and international design marks the Centre Pompidou's post-war design collection. A very important collection has been built up around the creations of the architect and designer Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007). Why this attachment, you may ask? Because, like no other, the great Italian master produced a wide variety of objects throughout his life: ceramics, jewelry, tableware, furniture and industrial objects. But above all, he will have crossed eras imprinting, at each major societal upheaval, an exceptional creative boldness.

Another designer with a strong presence in the Centre Pompidou's design collections is the goldsmith-artist Serge Mouille (1922-1988), known worldwide for his lighting fixtures and floor lamps with stripped metal forms and uniformly painted black. The Centre Pompidou also has an important collection dedicated to one of the major French designers of the post-war period: Pierre Paulin (1927-2009). On the latter, the Musée National d'Art Moderne has a significant collection of drawings.

Often considered the enfant terrible of French contemporary design, Philippe Starck (1949) is of course very present in the Centre Pompidou's collections. More than 300 works tell the story of his career, his style and his modernity.

At the international level, the Musée National d'Art Moderne has gathered pieces around such key contemporary designers as Ron Arad (Israel, 1951), Jasper Morrison (England, 1959), Marcel Wanders (Netherlands, 1963) and Ross Lovegrove (Wales, 1958).

It is obviously impossible to present succinctly all of the Center's design collections... The richness of the French institution's design holdings is representative of the evolution of techniques and creation in the design world. The collections certainly feature pieces of furniture, but also drawings, sketches, models, and magazine originals that reflect the creative process at work.

For design lovers, the institution has multiplied in recent years the number of retrospectives devoted to designers (Charlotte Perriand in 2005, Ettore Sottsass (2008-2009), Eileen Gray in 2013, Pierre Paulin in 2016), giving on these occasions the opportunity to discover the depth of its collections.

François Boutard