TEFAF Maastricht | A Modern Dialogue with the Past
March 7-14, 2024
Tribute to Galerie Maison et Jardin, Paris 1968
Demisch Danant is proud to take part in the upcoming edition of TEFAF Maastricht, held from March 7-14 at the MECC.
The gallery will participate in the world-renowned fair, showcasing an artful juxtaposition of furniture from its roster of French designers from the 1960s and 1970s including Maria Pergay, Jean-Michel Chaudeurge, Maurice Pré and Janette Laverrière, Joseph-André Motte, Maxime Old, alongside contemporary designs by Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance and Pierre Charpin, ceramics by 20th century artist Vassil Ivanoff, a sculpture from abstract artist Albert Féraud and artworks by 19th-century painter Eugène Isabey and 20th-century artists Eugène Leroy and Alain Jacquet.
Extending beyond the conventional boundaries of art or design curation, Demisch Danant’s booth is a continuation of the gallery’s desire to unite significant works from diverse periods and styles, melding classicism with modernity, and making objects come alive together, despite the centuries that separate them. For the first time, Demisch Danant will present historic pieces from the Haute époque (the Middle Ages), sourced by rising French antiques dealer Thorvald Duboc. The selection on view includes a sumptuous 15th century walnut chest and, from the collection of Michel Rullier, a 16th century walnut money changing table with sculpted Larch wood base.
Drawing inspiration from the ambiance of 1960s Parisian interiors, where heirloom pieces mingled with contemporary art, the exhibition pays homage to this blend of tradition and innovation as once carried forward by design luminaries Jean Dives et Gilles Sermadiras, the founders of the iconic Parisian gallery, Maison et Jardin. Established in 1951, the gallery rapidly set itself apart from its peers for its daring pairing of historic and modern pieces.
Notably, Maison et Jardin was one of the first adopters of Maria Pergay’s stainless steel works. Impressed by the collection she designed for Uginox in 1968, Dives and Sermadiras showcased her pieces in a groundbreaking exhibition at their gallery in May of the same year. Amidst exceptional antique furniture and sumptuous tapestries, were introduced Pergay’s ultra-modern works. Fittingly, Pergay’s own trajectory further exemplified this interplay between eras: the visionary artist – and a talent championed by Suzanne Demisch and Stéphane Danant since the gallery’s early days – transitioned from selling antiques to pioneering designer in the late 1960s. Through her life, her skillful integration of historical decorative arts with contemporary furnishings breathed life into spaces, transcending temporal boundaries.
Revolutionary at the time, Maison et Jardin highly contributed in the renewal of the bourgeois interior design and the gallery’s legacy is primordial in understanding French decoration in the 1960s and 1970s.
Titled A Modern Dialogue with the Past: Tribute to Galerie Maison et Jardin, Paris 1968, Demisch Danant's presentation at TEFAF Maastricht pays homage to its predecessors and commemorates this influential era in design history. Over the years, both as gallerist and collectors, Suzanne Demisch and Stéphane Danant have advocated for a humanistic and cultured approach to interiors, emphasizing the dialogues between pieces within a room and the stories they carry, as much as the individual value of each of them taken separately. The integration of objects and artworks from revolved times among furniture from the 1960s and 1970s corresponds to a reinterpretation of the interiors of that period. The colliding of styles and eras is part of the decorative vocabulary of that time and has since become Demisch Danant’s signature.
Visit Demisch Danant at TEFAF Maastricht from March 7 to 14 at booth 432.