Eileen Gray: The Private Painter
The Kalon Library Vol. 08
From our studio shelves — volumes that trace the ideas, influences, and cultural undercurrents behind our work.
A cult figure in the world of the build environment, Irish-born designer Eileen Gray (1878-1976) was a pioneer of Modernism. In a career spanning nearly 80 years Gray produced works, including furniture design, lighting, carpets and architecture, that were groundbreaking at a time when few women were recognized in the field. Her Cap Modern house is the stuff of architectural legend. Designed and built by Gray between 1926 and 1929, Cap Modern (more widely known as E-1027) is an iconic piece of modernist architecture located on the French Riveria. Le Corbussier was obsessed with the house and has a tangled and controversial relationship to the property which involves, among other things, a series of murals he painted on the walls without Gray’s permission. Le Corbussier claimed it was a kind of collaboration, others have pronounced it an act of jealousy and desecration.
Eileen Gray The Private Painter offers a look at Gray’s lifelong — and incredibly private — practice as a fine artist. Secretive and reclusive, Gray destroyed most of her personal belongings before she died. For decades, much of her work was attributed to or overshadowed by the male peers she influenced. This book offers a fuller look at Gray’s life and legacy through “the imaginative work which she kept to herself.”
“As the old maxim has it, an artist learns from the heart, a designer from the head and a craftsman from the hands. Of course, ideally, any creative person should be able to draw upon all three sources, but in reality the combination is rare. Eileen Gray was one such blessed with this triple inspiration, and her work is marvellously enriched as a consequence.”
“She was a pioneer modernist, with an innovative approach to shape, line, color, materials and textures, and the first designer to work in chrome, before Le Corbusier, Mies va Der Rohe and Marcel Breuer. Traces of Cubism, De Stijl and Surrealsm are discernible in her work, but it possessed its own highly distinctive character and flavour.”
“Looking back at the many different phases of her work one discovers a singular mind, which coloured everything she created. In a unique atmosphere of freedom and rigour, without concession to fashion or taste, she created furniture, houses and works of art that still speak to us with a clear and timeless voice. Much has been written about Eileen Gray’s pioneering architecture and her innovatory furniture but we know little about her work as an artist.”
We hope you’ll consider supporting local, independent bookstores and publishing houses. For architecture and design-related books, we love Stout Books in San Francisco. Explore their complete catalog, including Eileen Gray: The Private Painter and other books on Gray.
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