Eero Aarnio – Selling exhibition

The legendary Finnish designer, Professor Eero Aarnio was one of the first to create furniture in fiberglass and plastic; materials that offer virtually unlimited possibilities to create new shapes and colours.

Visning och öppettider

Eero Aarnio – selling exhibition
23.3. – 1.4., Iso Roobertinkatu 12, Helsinki
Open weekdays 10 am. – 5 pm., Sat – Sun 11 am – 3 pm

Part of the exhibits will be sold during the
Modern + Contemporary sale
The catalogue will be available at www.bukowskis.com from 4 pm. on 30 March
Auction: 22.4.

Part of the exhibits will be sold at
www.bukowskismarket.com
At sale: 22.3 – 1.4

Curator
Dan von Koskull +358 (0)9 - 668 91 10
dan.vonkoskull@bukowskis.com

Eero Aarnio (b. 1932)
The Finnish designer Eero Aarnio was one of the first to create furniture in fiberglass and plastic; materials that offer virtually unlimited possibilities to create new shapes and colours.

With his “Ball Chair”, presented at the international furniture fair in Cologne in 1966, Aarnio revolutionized furniture design and the innovative easy chair marked his final career breakthrough internationally. Eero Aarnio’s design is sculptural but at the same time playful, with frequent allusions to 1960’s pop culture. Aarnio’s designs were based on fundamental geometrical elements such as the sphere and the ellipse, and he transformed these into seat furniture. Aarnio’s creed was that “a chair is a seat but a seat doesn’t have to look like a chair”. The pieces quickly became hugely popular with a broad international demand and today Eero Aarnio is considered one of the greatest contemporary designers worldwide. With their futuristic shapes and materials Aarnio’s creations became symbols of the Space Age - a notion the designer himself has always shunned. “Space didn’t inspire me at all, I just wanted to create a round chair, I simply wanted to find a new shape”, Aarnio has stated in numerous interviews.

Both Hollywood and the world’s leading fashion designers have fallen for Aarnio’s design
Many of Aarnio’s chair models have gained worldwide fame thanks to movies such as James Bond, “Tommy”, Mars Attack” and “Men in Black”. The fashion designer Vivienne Westwood has used Ball chairs in her shows and Donatella Versace has been photographed in a Bubble Chair (from 1968) of transparent acrylic. The chair model has also appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine.

International Travelling Exhibition 2003 – 2007
In the summer of 2003 Kunsthalle Helsinki organized the very first retrospective Aarnio exhibition, which represented a cross-section of the designer’s 40 year-long career. During the following four years the exhibition was shown in Oslo ( Kunstindustrimuseet, 2004), Copenhagen (Dansk Design Center, 2005), Washington DC ( The Embassy of Finland, 2005), México City (Museo Franz Mayer, 2007) and in Berlin (Embassy of Finland, 2007)

Wherever it was shown, the exhibition gained huge popularity and was given extensive media coverage. Aarnio’s both timeless and innovative shapes, with their playful, understated elegance feels equally contemporary and appealing in cultures as diverse as Finland and México.

Now the exhibits from this exhibition are offered for sale at Bukowskis Modern + Contemporary sale in Helsinki, 22 – 23.4. 2012. Part of objects will be sold through Bukowskis Market, Bukowskis’ internet auction house.

Press contact
Daniela Wrede +358 (0)9 - 668 911 16
daniela.wrede@bukowskis.com