Robert Mallet – Stevens 1886 - 1945

From interior decoration to architecture and stage sets, the eclectic career of Robert Mallet-Stevens, a great twentieth-century architect. His untimely death prevented Mallet-Stevens from actively participating in the post-war reconstruction projects and condemned him to a long period of oblivion. His works were not rediscovered and studied until the beginning of the 1980s, when his complexity aroused renewed interest in the experts. Influenced by the work of Josef Hoffmann, Robert Mallet-Stevens (1886-1945), from the first World War onwards, began to make a name for himself in the field of interior decoration for the haute couture fashion houses in Paris and other luxury boutiques. Between 1924 and 1933, he built a villa at Hyères for Charles de Nouailles, and Gabriel Guévrékian, Theo van Doesburg and Pierre Chareau also contributed towards its décor. This house sealed his reputation as a modern and elegant avant-garde interior designer. At the same time, Mallet-Stevens, following his eclectic bent, was also working for the emerging art of the cinema, creating sets for Marcel L’Herbier’s film L’inhumaine (1924) among others. His buildings of greatest interest in Paris include the pavilion of the Arca Club (1922), the tourism pavilion at the “Exposition des Arts Décoratifs” (1925), the Alfa Romeo garage (1925), the houses in Rue Mallet-Stevens (1925-27), as well as the firemen’s barracks at Passy (1935-36), De Nouailles’ villa at Hyères (1922), the La Pergola casino at Saint-Jean-de-Luz (1928) and the municipal theatre in Grasse (1930). He died in 1945.