Four-Panel Screen

Four-Panel Screen from Eileen Gray's Rue Bonaparte Apartment, ca. 1930-1932
White-painted perforated steel
This model was originally conceived for the guest bedroom of Gray's E-1027 home
67 in. (170 cm) high
133/4 in. (35 cm) wide, each panel

E-1027 is a masterpiece of modern movement architecture. Completed in 1929, it is a relatively small house, built onto a rocky hillside overlooking the Mediterranean at Roquebrune, between Monte Carlo and the Italian border, and it was here that Eileen Gray so successfully put into effect the ideas that she had been developing throughout the twenties. Guided by architect Jean Badovici to translate her imaginative approach into practical and viable solutions, she made highly individualistic experiments with structural and internal volumes, and proved extraordinarily inventive with the furnishing and detailing of these spaces. For the guest bedroom on the lower floor, she used a double bed with functional fittings cleverly incorporated into the wall behind. At the foot of the bed was a folding screen of perforated metal sheets in wood frames (fig. 1). This served to delineate the sleeping area while allowing the passage of light. According to a note in Gray's hand on a copy of E.1027: Maison en Bord de Mer, this movable partition also acted as a break, eliminating drafts.
This was the first appearance of the idea of the painted, perforated metal screen (Adam, no. 17.3, though Adam's description of "large circular holes" would seem to correspond with the Rue Chateaubriand screen; the E-1027 screen had tiny perforations). Two further variants of the perforated screen are recorded. One, with four panels, each with regular large circular perforations, was made for the Rue Chateaubriand apartment that Gray decorated for Badovici in 1930 (Adam, no. 17.1); the other is the present screen (Adam, no. 17.2). This specific example is distinguished by the refinement of having two pairs of panels with differing patterns of perforations-two panels are pierced with rows of short rectangles, two with rows of longer, slimmer rectangles. This screen appears in photographs of Gray's bedroom in her Rue Bonaparte, Paris apartment, and it remained a part of the furnishings of the apartment until her death (Fig. 2). The screen was included in the sale of her estate in 1980, when it was acquired by the present owner.
Like the "brick" screens that had preceded them, Eileen Gray's perforated metal screens are deceptively simple objects that engage in subtle ways with space and with light. They play a practical role as freestanding functional elements within the architectural spaces they inhabit-more significantly they serve also as satisfying sculptural exercises whose discreet objective is to delight the spirit.

Provenance:
Eileen Gray, Rue Bonaparte Apartment, Paris
Sotheby's Monaco, May 25, 1980, lot 265
Exhibited:
Victoria & Albert Museum,
London, January-April 1979
Scottish Arts Council Gallery,
Edinburgh, June-July 1979
Museum of Modern Art, New York, February-March 1980
Illustrated:
Caroline Constant and Wilfried Wang, eds., Eileen Gray: An Architecture for All Senses, exh. cat., Berlin, 1996, p. 129
Literature:
Caroline Constant, Eileen Gray, London, 2000, p. 103 (for the first screen at E-1027)