The Kunstmuseen Krefeld is presenting Germany's first major retrospective dedicated to Charlotte Perriand, the pioneering French designer and architect. The exhibition, titled "Charlotte Perriand. L'Art d'habiter / The Art of Living," features approximately 500 works spanning her seven-decade career, showcasing everything from iconic furniture designs to tiny houses and even an entire ski resort.
The exhibition runs from November 2, 2025, to March 15, 2026, across three venues: the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum and the two houses designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - Haus Lange and Haus Esters. The show is curated by Katia Baudin and Waleria Dorogova, and will later travel to the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg and the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona.
Perriand's breakthrough moment came in 1927 when she approached Le Corbusier's Paris studio at age 24, fresh from graduating from the École de l'Union Centrale des Arts Décoratifs. Initially dismissed by Le Corbusier, who reportedly told her "We don't embroider cushions here," according to Perriand's autobiography, she quickly won him over. Her "Bar sous le toit" presentation at the Salon d'Automne featured radical steel tube furniture and industrial elements that completely challenged the prevailing Art Deco interiors of the time.
"Metal plays the same role in furniture as concrete does in architecture. It's a revolution," Perriand proclaimed in 1929, fascinated by a material previously used mainly in bicycle and automobile manufacturing. For her, metal represented the expression of a new, modern human being.
The Krefeld exhibition allows visitors to enter a reconstructed version of Perriand's visionary living space and sit on iconic steel tube furniture pieces like the "Chaise longue basculante" and the "Fauteuil grand confort." The reconstruction, created by Italian furniture manufacturer Cassina, features modular cabinet systems instead of fixed walls, with function rather than decoration determining the concept. Cassina has been the sole authorized manufacturer of Perriand's designs since the mid-1960s and supported both this exhibition and the 2019 Perriand retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.
During her ten-year collaboration with Le Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, Perriand developed diverse projects that reflected her modernist vision. The passionate mountaineer designed a futuristic alpine bivouac in 1936, experimented with maximum space-efficient micro living units, and conceived modular, prefabricated vacation homes for modest budgets.
By the late 1930s, Perriand began reorienting her approach. She left Le Corbusier's studio, despite continuing to admire his genius, due to increasing conflicts. Her designs became warmer and more organic, incorporating more wood partly because it was cheaper than metal. While Charlotte Perriand was recognized throughout her life, her financial success remained modest, according to her daughter Pernette Perriand-Barsac, who supported the realization of the Krefeld exhibition.
In 1938, Perriand created her first "Forme-Libre" table, which was neither round nor rectangular. Its curved form was inspired by the layout of her small Montparnasse apartment and her desire to gather with friends even in tight spaces. The table was crafted from a recycled old wooden board - a recycling project long before the concept became fashionable. Perriand consistently worked with reused or locally available materials, particularly during her formative stays in Japan.
Contrary to what one might assume today, given that Perriand's furniture achieves top prices at international auctions and brands like Saint Laurent reference her designs, the architect always wanted to design for broad population segments. She felt aligned with socialism, conceived shelters for the homeless, and denounced social injustices in interwar Paris through a monumental collage. In the early 1950s, she designed compact student housing, and through collaboration with Sonia Delaunay and Jean Prouvé, created her famous "Tunisie" shelf.
In the 1960s, Perriand planned and realized the gigantic alpine resort Les Arcs in Savoie, designed to provide broad public access to winter sports and recreation. To save costs, she worked with prefabricated kitchen and bathroom capsules that were hoisted into buildings using cranes.
The Krefeld exhibition's achievement lies in introducing Germany to a woman whose furniture icons many recognize, but whose character and values remain largely unknown to most. She long stood in the shadow of Le Corbusier. For example, the patent for the now-famous "Chaise longue basculante" was jointly filed in 1928 by the trio Perriand-Le Corbusier-Pierre Jeanneret, with creators listed in exactly that order. Later, Le Corbusier insisted on alphabetical ordering, moving himself to the front. Eventually, only his name remained for a long time.
Charlotte Perriand, who died in 1999, never showed particular interest in such matters. It wasn't her signature that mattered to her, but her love for what she did. Her research drive, curiosity about the future and everything foreign, and the desire to give people something through her work - all of this stood at the center of her tireless, 70-year creative career.
