Chess Design
Chess Design
Chess Design
Chess Design
Chess Design

Chess Design

By Romain Morandi
Sale price$69.00

A true mirror of 20th-century creation, Chess Design presents exceptional documentation on chess games made by artists, designers, architects, and craftsmen: chessboards themselves, but also artist drawings, execution plans and archival photographs.

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Overview

Chess Design

By presenting nearly 300 of these chessboards chronologically, the author offers a new perspective on the history of art and its evolution. Art Nouveau, Secession, Surrealism, Fluxus, Pop Art, and most of the great movements born and following one another in the Fine Arts find an echo with these chessboards and the 16 pieces that animate them. These chess games also reflect the evolution of techniques and materials used during this period: wood, glass, and ceramics from the 1950s to steel, plastic, and composite materials.

At the border between the plastic arts and the decorative arts, these chessboards are made by big names in the art scene, design or architecture – Alexandre Rodchenko, Jean-Michel Frank, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, or, more recently, Yoko Ono, Robert Filliou, Yayo Kusama, Victor Vasarely, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry or Damien Hirst – as by anonymous people. The synthesis offered by the author constitutes a valuable and innovative historian’s work, supported by rich and mostly unpublished iconography.

Text in English and French.

Pages

304

Language
  • ENG- English
Publisher

Editions Norma

Format
  • Hardcover
Size

9.38 x 1.31 x 11.99 inches

ISBN

978-2376660668

About the author

Romain Morandi

Romain Morandi is a French art historian and gallerist specializing in 20th-century design and decorative arts. After earning his degree in Art History, he began his career promoting young contemporary artists before focusing on design and decorative arts. In 2011, he joined Galerie Alexandre Guillemain in Paris, eventually becoming a partner. Together, they played a pivotal role in reintroducing the American studio craft movement to Europe through notable exhibitions such as "American Masters" (2016), "George Nakashima, 50 Years of Creation" (2018), and "Frank Lloyd Wright" (2022), for which Morandi authored accompanying catalogs.

In September 2022, Morandi established his own gallery at 18 rue Guénégaud in Paris's historic Saint-Germain-des-Prés district. The Galerie Romain Morandi offers a comprehensive view of modern and contemporary furniture, connecting various creative movements from the late 19th century to the present. The gallery assists clients in building and managing their collections and developing interior design projects.

Morandi is also the author of Chess Design, a book dedicated to artist and designer chess sets from 1890 to the present, published by Editions Norma in October 2022.

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