Maurice Dufrêne (1876–1955) was a French decorative artist who headed the Maîtrise workshop of the Galeries Lafayette department store. He was considered one of the premier French designers of the 20th century.
Education
Maurice Dufrêne was born in Paris in 1876. His father had a wholesale commodities business. Dufrêne would collect leftover pieces of wood, cardboard, and fabric from his father’s workplace and turn them into decorative artworks. He studied at the École des Arts Decoratifs. Originally, he planned to be a painter.
Biography
Dufrêne found a position as a manager and furniture designer at La Maison Moderne of Julius Meier-Grafe, whose showrooms displayed rooms decorated in the Art Nouveau style. He worked with designers such as Henry van de Velde, Victor Horta, Charles Plumet, and Anthony Selmersheim. From 1903, Dufrêne exhibited regularly at the Salon d’Automne and the Salons of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. In 1904, he was one of the founding members of the Société des artistes décorateurs, and for thirty years, he would exhibit at its Salon. He designed many different types of decorative art, including metalwork, ceramics, glass, and fabric. He also designed complete interiors but was best known for his furniture.
Embed from Getty ImagesEducator
Dufrêne taught at the École Boulle in Paris from 1912 to 1923. He also taught at the École des Arts Appliqués. He was one of the main designers of the modernist set for the 1919 film Le Carnaval des vérités. In 1921, the Galeries Lafayette launched the Maîtrise workshop under Dufrêne’s direction. This workshop followed the Primavera of the Printemps store founded in 1912 by René Guilleré. Also, it competed with Paul Follot’s Pomone of Le Bon Marché and the Studium of the Grands Magasins du Louvre.
Maurice Dufrêne French Designer designed the Maîtrise exhibit for the 1925 International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts in Paris. At the 1925 Exposition, Dufréne was everywhere. Apart from his directorship of the La Maitrise pavilion, in which he displayed a dining room and men’s and women’s bedrooms in collaboration with Englinger, Tcherniack, and Brochard, he designed the petit salon in the Ambassade Francaise, a boutique for the furrier Jungman & Cie, and the entire row of shops on the Alexander III bridge. (Duncan, 1992)
He produced designs for Christofle, a large firm that manufactured high-quality Art Deco metalwork in the 1920s and 1930s. The 1930s were no less frenetic. The earlier predilection for wood gave way gradually to metal and glass. At sixty years of age, Dufréne could still adapt, as he had shown during the demise of Art Nouveau a quarter of a century earlier. (Duncan, 1992)
Style Maurice Dufrêne French Designer
He took his inspiration from 18th and 19th-century designs, incorporating a modern approach. His interiors ranged eclectically from townhouses to avant-garde to glass, metal, and mirrors to commissions from Le Mobilier National for embassies and the Palais de l’Elysee in Paris. (Maurice Dufrene – Calderwood Gallery, n.d.)
Dufrêne began work during the height of the Art Nouveau period but soon turned away from this style. In the 1920s, he quickly adapted to the Art Deco movement. He hated the uniform tubular steel chairs that became common in the 1930s, writing, “The same chair, mechanical and tubular, is to be found in almost every country—Austria, America, Germany, Sweden, France, etc. “It is the anonymous, neutral universal chair… that is the root cause of the great dullness.” By contrast, La Maîtrise emphasised that its furniture was individual: “The works of La Maîtrise are registered; the works of La Maîtrise are signed.”
Dufrêne’s furniture designs show that he appreciated craftsmanship and workshop production. His designs from 1910 onward combine structure and decoration in a harmonious balance. They are austere and neoclassical, reminiscent of the Louis XVI style. Usually, his furniture was made of dark mahogany, in some cases with ebonized decoration, but it usually did not have carved ornament. His style became simpler and more angular in the 1930s.
Sources
Duncan, A. (1992, November 1). Art Deco Furniture. https://doi.org/10.1604/9780500276600
Maurice Dufrene – Calderwood Gallery. (n.d.). Calderwood Gallery. Retrieved January 7, 2023, from https://www.calderwoodgallery.com/maurice-dufrene
Maurice Dufrêne – Wikipedia. (2015, June 24). Maurice Dufrêne – Wikipedia. Retrieved January 7, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Dufr%C3%AAne