CHESS DESIGN

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

By presenting nearly 300 of these chessboards chronologically, the author offers a new point of view on the history of art and its evolution. Art Nouveau, secession, surrealism, Fluxus, Pop art – most of the great movements which were born and succeeded one another in the Fine Arts are echoed in these chessboards and the 16 sculpture forms which animate them. These games also reflect the evolution of techniques and materials used during this period: wood, glass and ceramics gave way, from the 1950s, to steel, plastic and composite materials.

At the border between the visual arts and the decorative arts, these chessboards are made by big names in the art, design or architecture scene – Alexandre Rodtchenko, Jean-Michel Frank, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, or, more recently, Yoko Ono, Robert Filliou, Yayo Kusama, Victor Vasarely, Zaha Hadid, Frank Ghery or Damian Hirst.

The synthesis offered by the author constitutes a valuable and innovative historical work, supported by an iconography that is both rich and often unprecedented.

Text in French and English