Paul Dupré Lafon

Paul Dupré Lafon was born in 1900 in Marseille. He began his secondary education with the Jesuits before embarking on an artistic career at the Beaux-Arts. The young artist settled in Paris to embrace the profession of architect-decorator. His first creations show an austere and bourgeois Art Deco style, but in 1929 he begins the decoration of a large private mansion near the Parc Monceau, a large-scale project that is decisive in launching his career.

Lafon’s work reveals a perfect mastery of the profession of interior designer. Combining finesse and functionalism in an exceptional balance of forms, the artist adopts a modern and refined Art Deco style. The artist brilliantly implements the avant-garde doctrine of functionalism: he advocates the use of technique to the benefit of a very contemporary aesthetic.

His sensitivity to the material led him to call on Hermès for leather, and to work with quality cabinetmakers and craftsmen to bring out the best in noble materials such as Rio rosewood, Macassar wood, ivory, parchment, ebony or marble in his varied creations. He invents marriages between wood and chromed metal and enjoys refining his furniture with stone, iron and ceramic plates. The artist, discreet, prefers the wonder of his faithful customers to the lights of exhibitions. If his movable creations are coveted on the art market as rare pieces of a bygone era, his decorative style still largely inspires contemporary interior architecture. Our auction house regularly presents, in decorative arts, some of his works whose rarity is frantically disputed by determined collectors.

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XIX-XX^e Centuries

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