Due to the insatiable appetite for everything Jean Prouvé on the part of collectors and scholars alike, most books on the life and work of this central figure of 20th Century architecture and design are long exhausted.

Specialized in the work of Prouvé, the Gelerie Patrick Seguin, conscientious of the need to publish a work of reference for the public at large, is presenting an important monograph focusing on Prouvé furniture.

This project originated with the historical one-man show curated by the Galerie Patrick Seguin at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York in 2003, « Jean Prouvé, Furniture & Architecture ». The Sonnabend Gallery, promulgator of some of the most important artists of the past several decades, and intimately associated for over 40 years with the evolutions of the spectre of moderne and contemporary art, decided to introduce Jean Prouvé to the American public. As a result of their pivotal position, the Sonnabend Gallery is co-editor of the forthcoming Prouvé book.

This bi-lingual publication will be widely distributed throughout France and abroad.

The work is quadri-partite : the first section, prefaced by Patrick Seguin and under the aegis of the art histroian and journalist, Françoise-Claire Prodhon, is a collection of interviews with collectors and enthusiasts of Jean Prouvé, who expose their relationship with and point of view on Jean Prouvé’s oeuvre. The interviewed include the architects Jean Nouvel, Shigeru Ban, Renzo Piano, the designer Marc Newson, the couturiers Azzedine Alaïa, Marc Jacob…to name but a few.

The second section of the book focuses on the various exhibitions of Jean Prouvé’s work organized by the Galerie Patrick Seguin in France and abroad. This section opens with images from the exhibition at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York, and continues with images from the exhibitions at the Architecture Biennale in Venice, at the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles, at 10Corso Como Comme des Garçons in Tokyo...

This section is concluded by an essay detailing the omnipresence of Jean Prouvé works among the most important international art collections.

The third section is devoted to a detailed biographie of Jean Prouvé by one of his daughters, Catherine Drouin-Prouvé.

The final section, introduced by the historian of design Raymond Guidot, is a catalogue of Jean Prouvé’s furniture, anthologized by Catherine Coley, both art and architectural historian and scientific director of this book.

The distinct nomenclature employed specifies the date, the original title, the characteristique technique, and the the provenance of each piece as a way of analyzing the different typologies of Jean Prouvé’s furniture.

This section is abundantly illustrated with blueprints, sketches, vintage photographs...and other archival documents from the Prouvé family, the Centre Pompidou library and from private repositories.