André Groult
André Groult was born on August 27, 1884, and studied science at the Sorbonne before briefly working for his father’s journal L’Acclimatation. In 1907 he married Nicole Groult, born Pauline Marie Poiret, a couturier and sister of the celebrated fashion designer Paul Poiret, whose family connections opened doors throughout Paris’s artistic and intellectual circles. The couple opened an antique furniture and décor business soon after marrying, and around three years later André began his career as a furniture and decorative arts designer while Nicole launched her own fashion house. In 1910 he joined the Société des Artistes Décorateurs and began exhibiting regularly at the Salon d’Automne. Through his friendship with the painter Marie Laurencin, who became both a lifelong family friend and collaborator, the Groults met Guillaume Apollinaire, and they also befriended Louis Süe, Kees van Dongen, André Derain, and Francis Picabia. They operated the Galerie André Groult at 31 rue d’Anjou beginning in 1912, hosting exhibitions of Odilon Redon and Cubist works by Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Jacques Villon, Albert Gleizes, and Jean Metzinger before the gallery closed at the outbreak of World War I. In 1921, André purchased a Georges Braque still life at the Kahnweiler sequestration sales, possibly Glass of Absinthe, now in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Groult died in 1966, having remained active in his field into the 1960s.
At the 1912 Salon d’Automne, Groult contributed wallpaper designs to Maison Cubiste, André Mare’s celebrated project comprising three domestic interiors and a façade, which incorporated furniture by Mare, mirrors by Laurencin, and paintings by Fernand Léger and Jean Metzinger, among others. His most celebrated achievement came at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, where he designed the Chambre de Madame for the French Embassy pavilion, a woman’s bedchamber in a pink and gray palette with walls stitched in soie needlework and rounded furniture upholstered in natural galuchat, or sharkskin leather. The room became one of the defining interiors of the entire exposition and cemented his reputation as a premier exponent of French Art Deco. He collaborated again with Laurencin on the same 1925 project and worked with the sculptor Ossip Zadkine in 1928. In 1935, he designed the furnishings for the first-class cabins of the ocean liner SS Normandie, placing his work at the center of one of the most celebrated Art Deco commissions of the interwar period.
Groult’s furniture combined curving, organic shapes with extremely rich materials, striking a distinctive balance between tradition and modernism that placed him among designers such as Paul Follot, Maurice Dufrêne, and Süe et Mare, whose work was considered contemporary rather than strictly modern. He worked exclusively in the finest materials, exotic wood veneers, plush upholstery, shagreen overlays, and bronze accents, assembling them with expert craftsmanship into a naturally curvilinear aesthetic immediately recognizable as his own. His signature use of galuchat gave his furniture a tactile, almost sculptural richness that distinguished it from the more austere geometry favored by other Art Deco designers.
Key Influences
- Chambre de Madame: His 1925 bedchamber for the French Embassy pavilion remains one of the defining interiors of the Art Deco movement and secured his lasting reputation as a master of the style.
- Shagreen and Luxury Materials: His pioneering use of galuchat in furniture design helped establish sharkskin leather as a signature material of French Art Deco luxury.
- SS Normandie: His first-class cabin designs placed his work within one of the most celebrated decorative arts commissions of the interwar period.
- Cubist Circle Connections: His gallery and friendships with Cubist painters and collectors linked the world of avant-garde fine art directly to the development of French decorative design.
- Tradition and Modernism: His synthesis of eighteenth and nineteenth century French decorative traditions with modern form helped define a distinctly French strand of Art Deco that balanced innovation with historical continuity.
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