Readymag Stories: Eileen Gray

In 1900 Eileen Gray began to take classes at the prestigious Slade art school in London, including both sculpture and lacquering. In 1902 she relocated to Paris to continue her art education, then returned to London three years later to stay with her mother, who’d fallen ill, but later left for Paris again. It was then she started studying under Seizo Sugawara, a Japanese master of traditional lacquerie art. In 1910 Gray and Sugawara opened an interior design workshop in Paris.

In the following years the workshop became famous, despite the fact Grey and Sugawara were forced to flee to England to escape World War I. The peak achievement of this period was Gray’s interior design for the Rue de Lota apartment in Paris. In 1921 Gray became involved with architecture critic Jean Badovici and a year later opened her own boutique under the pseudonym Jean Désert.

Influenced by Badovici, Gray began to study avant-garde art and architecture with the support of Polish architect Adrienne Górska. Her style of furniture design evolved towards clean lines, metal, and glass. In 1926 Gray began work on a villa on the Mediterranean called E-1027.

The name is an acronym for the initials of Eileen and Jean Badovici: E for Eileen, 10 and 2 representing initials J and B, and 7 for G—her surname, Gray. It’s said that the name of the villa represents the embrace Gray gives to Badovici, and thus she turned away from the cold, machine-like attitude more typical of the avant-garde. It is also rumored that E-1027 is a subtle architectural pun against Le Corbusier.

Gray and Badovici split in 1931. E-1027 remained with Badovici while Gray built herself a new villa: Tempe a païa. She explicitly stated that she wanted the walls of E-1027 to remain permanently white. This lead to controversy when Le Corbusier, a friend of Badovici, visited E-1027 in 1938 and, without receiving permission, painted eight cubist murals on its walls. Some of them contained sexual images alluding to Gray, and photos revealed that Le Corbusier had painted her naked. Gray declared it an act of vandalism and male chauvinism, while Le Corbusier claimed he was merely joking.

However, for Le Corbusier, the murals and E-1027 likely weren’t simply a joke. He was obsessed with E-1027 throughout the rest of his life. Le Corbusier tried to purchase the house many times and added extra imagery to some of the murals when he could—even as late as 1962. After his efforts failed, he built himself a small summer house adjacent to E-1027 called Cabanon. Le Corbusier eventually died of a heart attack in 1965 while swimming in front of E-1027.