Félix Aublet

Furniture design, lighting, interior architecture, cinema and theater decoration, painting

About

Painter, furniture designer, interior architect, advertiser, and decorator for cinema and theater, Félix Aublet's work is characterized by both tension and sincerity. As pragmatic as he is artistic, he blends material, color, and function, combining technical knowledge with a strong aesthetic sense.

At the dawn of the 20th century, he grows up in a family environment shaped by his father, Albert Aublet, a famous genre and Orientalist painter. Encouraged by his father, Félix enrolls in the École des Beaux-Arts, gravitating towards Cézanne's precubist painting and Derain's realism.

He radically breaks away from the artistic environment of his childhood, developing a passion for technological advancements — cinema, aviation, and automobiles. An admirer of modernism and Le Corbusier, in 1929 he designs his first pieces of furniture with an austere and rigorous simplicity, presented at the first UAM Salon in 1930. He also patents an invention for "a set of metal furniture made from standard elements and adjustable tubular chairs." In 1931, he designs the iconic "boule lamp," which pivots on a base and features a curved tube holding an adjustable half-sphere lampshade — a great success.

His studio receives numerous commissions for interior architecture. In 1932–1933 he designs the apartments of François Pernod and François Barret in Paris, school furniture for the Suresnes school (1935), and offices for the Compagnie fermière de Vichy.

In 1935, Félix Aublet and Robert Delaunay co-found the association "Art et Lumière." During the 1937 International Exposition, they produce enormous painted panels, assisted by forty other artists including Bissière, Estève, Le Moal, Manessier, and Survage. During the Occupation, Aublet reaches out to painter friends for the cabarets of the Aigle d'Or in Nice (1942, with Nicolas de Staël) and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1945, with Bissière, Manessier, and de Staël).

After an accident in 1959 that leaves him paraplegic, he returns to painting.

Curators' Picks

Boule Lamp c. 1931