Chairs: Icons of Modern Design

February 13, 2024

Madrid Design Festival presents a journey through the most recognisable icons in the history of design with an exhibition of 80 pieces from the Alexander von Vegesack - Domaine de Boisbuchet Collection, accompanied by nearly a hundred catalogues and other original documents.


A collector and exhibition organiser, Alexander von Vegesack conceived and co-founded the Vitra Design Museum in Germany in 1989, an institution he directed for more than 20 years. At the same time, he founded Domaine de Boisbuchet in France, where internationally renowned designers and architects have been conducting practical workshops every year since then.

 "Chairs: Icons of Modern Design" is a tribute to human ingenuity and artistic expression, tracing the metamorphosis of chairs from their humble, handcrafted origins to the iconic designs that today reflect the cultural, social and technological changes of the day.

The exhibition, curated by Guillermo Gil Fernández and Pablo Sevilla and with the collaboration of Finsa, invites visitors to discover the artistic and cultural context in which each one of the pieces on display was conceived, where special attention is paid to issues such as functionality, the social context or the technological and technical advances that accompanied each one of the designs. In this way, the exhibition can be enjoyed by both the general public and specialists.



Pablo Sevilla has also been in charge of the exhibition's display and graphic design, which shows the work of some of the most relevant figures in the fields of design and architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Michael Thonet, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier, Alvar and Aino Aalto, Charles and Ray Eames, Gaetano Pesce, Verner Panton, Frank Gehry and Philippe Stark, among many others.




The exhibition also presents a wide-ranging selection of over eighty catalogues, books and other original publications that, besides providing new clues that help to understand the context in which the works on display were conceived, permit an exhaustive exploration of the profound influence that the work of all these creators has had on today's world.



Address Fernán Gómez Centro Cultural de la Villa, Plaza de Colón 4 - Madrid, Spain

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