Coincides with New Post-Modernism Exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
One of the most iconic and important post-modernist designs, Proust’s Armchair, by Italian designer and architect Alessandro Mendini, is to be sold at Bonhams as part of its Contemporary Two sale on 19 October 2011. Designed in 1978, and executed in 1981, for a performance based exhibition entitled Robot Sentimentale, it has attracted a pre-sale estimate of £20,000 – 30,000.
Mendini describes his design, which was privately commissioned by the present owner from him in 1981, in The Story of the Proust Chair, 2001: “I found an appropriate ready-made in the replica of an eighteenth century armchair, and chose a detail from a Signac painting for the pattern that covers the whole armchair…”
As one of the most important pieces of design from the late 20th century, this lot is particularly resonant at the moment with the opening of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Post-Modernism exhibition, the museum’s first in depth survey of art, design and architecture of the 1970s and 1980s.