Pierre Chapo

After the war, Pierre Chapo (1927-1987) passed the entrance exam to the Beaux Arts de Paris in architecture. The classics, Greek, Roman, the Bauhaus masters, Frank Lloyd Wright, Buckminster Fuller, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe and many others inspired him. After returning from a trip to North America with Nicole, his partner, they opened the Chapo Gallery in 1958. Alongside his first pieces of furniture, he exhibited decorative objects, lighting, crockery, ceramics and Scandinavian design furniture. In his father-in-law's wood workshop in Clamart, he made his first models alone, such as the L01, known as the Godot bed, commissioned by Samuel Beckett, the T01 table and the S01 stool. Not far from there, on Boulevard Saint Germain, Steph Simon, Knoll, Sentou, La maison des métiers d'art... Artists, projects and works cross paths, intermingle, support or compete with each other: Scandinavia, Les Arcs, Serge Mouille, Charlotte Perriand, the Modulor, Georges Jouve, Japan, Simone Prouvé, Georges Candilis, Arne Jacobsen, Isamu Noguchi. More than 100 models created by Pierre Chapo will see the light of day over the years. Many of these models will go down in the history of 20th century design.