Jean Michel Frank

1895-1941

Thanks to excellent studies, favoured by belonging to a bourgeoisie family, Jean-Michel Frank crawled relationships that were crucial in his training and developed his aesthetic preferences.

The First World War marks tragically the family of Jean Michel who, after a brief financial apprenticeship, devoted entirely to the passion for the intellectual and artistic world. During the 1920s Frank worked for Nancy Cunard, Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard, Pecci-Blunt, Gunzburg, Cole Porter, Gaston Bergery, François Mauriac, customers who he seduced thanks to an “aesthetic of renunciation.”

Starting from 1930, now a prominent professional decorator, he will join other outstanding figures including Alberto Giacometti, Paul Rodocanachi, Jean Hugo, Emilio Terry and Christian Bérard. Frank’s style was temperate, his furniture played with neoclassical references, Baroque or Napoleon III, and the more conventional materials were complemented by the preciousness of ivory, ebony and mahogany. His career became international, with projects for Argentinean and American billionaires such as Jorge Born and Nelson Rockefeller.

The war again fought Frank’s fate, which closed the Chanaux workshop leaving France for Argentina, where he resumed his activities. After a few months in Buenos Aires, he moved to New York, where he died suicide in 1941, ending an extraordinary career.