Last year, it was Louis Vuitton who revived Perriand’s figure, establishing the artist’s strong connection to the fashion industry by building her unrealised beach house La Maison au Bord de L’Eau. The French brand also dedicated its spring summer 2014 collection to this timeless free spirit muse, focusing on the functionality of her modular furniture design with garments combined in different ways as “interchangeables modules”.

The milanese exhibition highlights Perriand’s photographic work and its radical role in the creative process behind her more well known design work. The latter is however well represented at Galleria Carla Sozzani with a selection including the Petalo Tables, the Nuage bookshelf and Chaise-longue designed by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Perriand as an attestation of their significant collaboration. An overwhelming natural bright light shrouds the space hosting this captivating journey through the 30’s and 40’s across Europe and Japan, where Charlotte Perriand portrayed the inspirational sources for her design work. Peasant and sea life details like fisherman’s nets, fishbones, stones, rocks and metal materials all contributed to create the ideas behind her most iconic pieces of interior design.

Her conception of design as a search for harmony with human beings and their environment is perfectly expressed in this exhibition showing the sources of inspiration in photography and the results of this accurate and illuminated research with her avant garde interior design.

The exhibition is on show until 4th May.