Artek and the Aaltos: Creating a Modern World, On view through September 25

The current Artek-and-Aaltos exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in Manhattan accomplishes two rare objectives. It celebrates a crucial partnership between world-famous designers and the company that manufactured and disseminated their works worldwide. And it gives equal credit to a woman who collaborated with her husband and partner in the design of these products.

The name Aalto is written large in the history of both architecture and furniture design. But too little attention has previously been given to the fact that most of the signature Aalto accomplishments are attributable to two Aaltos: the much better-known husband, Alvar Aalto, and his architect-wife-partner, Aino Marsio-Aalto.

Organized by the Bard gallery in collaboration with the Aalto Museum in Helsinki, the show includes some 200 works — many never before on public view — including sketches, working drawings, photos, and ample examples of actual furniture, lighting fixtures, and textiles. While drawings and photos do a good job of documenting buildings and interiors designed by the Aaltos — plus examples of Artek-Aalto furniture in interiors by others — most of the signature chairs, tables, cabinets, fabrics, etc., are right there, to be examined close-up.

Design Partners from the Outset

Both of the Aaltos studied architecture at the Institute of Technology in Helsinki, Aino getting her diploma in 1920, Alvar in 1922. The German-derived curriculum there was distinctive (vs. the French-oriented course then dominant in the U.S.) for integrating hands-on craftsmanship and construction experience studies, as well as interior and furniture design — into its architectural design courses.

After graduation, both moved to the central Finnish city of Jyväskylä. In 1924, Aino began working in Alvar’s fledgling office, and a year later they were married. Their 1920s work was among the best of the Nordic Classical mode then prevalent throughout Scandinavia. Even then, the young firm’s work included designs for furniture and lighting — as the exhibition documents.

In 1927, the Aaltos moved their practice — with their two young children — to the larger, culturally significant coastal city of Turku. There, their design thinking underwent a conversion to Modernism, influenced in part by travels to Germany, France, and Holland and contact with the pioneering Swedish Modernist Sven Markelius and the Bauhaus master artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. In 1929, Alvar became a member of the International Congress of Modern Architecture, where he mingled with such as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. As the more articulate and outgoing – and male – partner, Alvar became the dominant representative of the firm both internationally and within Finland.

As Finland modernized during the 1920s, the young firm was able to demonstrate its stylistic Modernism in several buildings, including the world-renowned Paimio Sanatorium and the municipal library at Viipuri — both still pilgrimage points for architecture lovers and both furnished with the signature furniture the Aaltos were designing.

Undoubtedly inspired by the widely distributed bentwood furniture of Thonet and by Marcel Breuer’s early chairs supported on tubular steel, the Aaltos explored innovative techniques using Finland’s abundant hardwoods. Working with a small Turku furniture maker, the Aaltos perfected the process of wood bending and laminating seen in so many subsequent pieces. This enabled the elegantly curved-and-straight geometries seen in the Paimio armchair of 1931-32. Shown here raised off the floor and skillfully lighted, this chair is impressive as sheer sculpture, aside from its implication of superior sitting comfort. Nearby, the three-legged stools, originally designed for the Viipuri library and now seen everywhere, are succinct statements about achievement with minimal means.

Establishing Artek

In 1935, the Aaltos took part in the establishment of the Artek company. The prime mover in this major step – and long-time director of Artek – was Maire Gullichsen, a wealthy supporter of both arts and industry. The splendid residence they designed for her, Villa Mairea, remains one of the finest of the architects’ built works. Beside its crucial role in producing furniture, Artek was committed from its founding to designing Modern interiors, exhibiting Modern art, and “propagandizing” for Modernism in all its aspects. The pioneering art gallery that Artek once operated in Helsinki is recognized in this exhibition with an alcove displaying a Leger painting, a Calder mobile, and prints by Picasso, Gauguin, and others.

Another key part of Artek’s mission was its commitment to standardization in design and production – vs. the tendency of manufacturers to promote novelty.

Products could be customized through limited choices of fabrics, but were otherwise unchangeable. Today, we can still buy examples of Artek’s classic chairs, tables, tea carts, and sinuous folding screens, newly made but unaltered in design or fabrication.

Artek began selling its products in the United States in 1938, and by 1940 had some 20 outlets across North America. Public recognition and sales were undoubtedly enhanced by the prominent display of the company’s furniture in the Aalto-designed Finnish Pavilion, one of the most celebrated of the national exhibitions at the New York World’s Fair of 1939.

Later Years and Loss of Aino

Design and production was seriously interrupted, worldwide, during the war years 1939 through 1945, when Finland unwisely allied itself with Germany to fight aggression from Russia. After the war, Alvar Aalto served on the architecture faculty at MIT for several years, adding greatly to the school’s distinction and undertaking the design of what became the Baker House dormitory (1948), his most ambitious and influential U.S. work.

(I had the unparalleled experience of living in Baker House through four academic years. The building was remarkable — and remains so — for its relationship to its riverfront setting, its unique stairways, and its uses of natural light. But my most personal and lasting recollections are of the amazingly compact but functional rooms, with their Artek lounge and desk chairs, plus built-in bed, couch, wardrobe, and bookshelves. Especially memorable – and supportive of my studies – was the broad cantilevered slab of the built-in desk with a drawer unit on wheels that could be tucked under it.)

Meanwhile, the longstanding partnership and marriage of Alvar and Aino was shattered by her early death in 1949. Alvar would go on to marry another architect, Elissa, who worked with him until his death in 1976. Alone, then with her, he produced numerous architectural landmarks. Among these are the Saynatsalo Town Hall (1952), the Louis Carre house in France (1958), the Kaufmann Conference Center at the Institute of International Education in New York (1965), a new campus for the Helsinki Institute of Technology (1966), the Mount Angel Abbey library in Oregon (1970), and the Finlandia concert hall in Helsinki (1971). In all of these could be seen Aalto-designed furniture, fabrics, and lighting.

Among the Aalto-designed non-furniture items seen in the show are the sinuous glass vases first produced in 1936 and still universally available, in their various sizes and colors. Also displayed here are a variety of distinctive lamps — hanging and standing — designed by Aalto between 1953 and 1975 and integral to many of the later Aalto interiors.

A catalogue for this show, published by Yale University Press, is scheduled to appear later in May. Edited by Nina Stritzler-Levine, curator of the show and Bard Graduate Center Gallery director, the book will include contributions from several Aalto scholars. It will be for sale at the gallery or through store.bgc.bard.edu