Alvar Aalto arrives in Madrid

A great exhibition that comes to Madrid after passing through the CaixaForum Barcelona: Alvar Aalto 1898-1976. Organic Architecture, Art and Design.

Alvar Aalto 1898-1976. Organic Architecture, Art and Design is the exhibition organized by the Vitra Design Museum (Weil am Rhein, Germany) and the Alvar Aalto Museum (Jyväskylä, Finland) with the collaboration of "la Caixa" Social Works and curated by Jochen Eisenbrand of the Vitra Design Museum, to be held in Madrid from September 30th, 2015 to January 10th, 2016. This is an itinerant exhibition that comes from CaixaForum Barcelona to CaixaForum Madrid, and around which have been organized a series of lectures from the 1st until the 7th of October.

The exhibition takes a new, more contemporary look at Aalto's work. Whereas previous exhibitions and publications have regarded Aalto’s organic architectural language as deriving directly from Finnish nature and landscape, the exhibition at CaixaForum Barcelona shows how Aalto’s affinity for organic form was mediated through a close dialogue with many artists of his time, such as László Moholy-Nagy, Jean Arp, Alexander Calder and Fernand Léger. Works by these and other artists are juxtaposed with Aalto’s designs and buildings in order to highlight his significance as a figurehead of the international art and architecture Avant-Garde from the 1920s onwards.

The display features 350 exhibits, among them period models, original drawings, furniture, lamps and glassware, as well as works by other notable artists, among them Alexander Calder and Jean Arp.

The exhibition includes Aalto’s most iconic buildings and designs, but also lesser-known projects that remained on paper, all complemented by the work of the German artist Armin Linke, who was commissioned to produce new photographs and film footage of particular buildings.

Alvar Aalto 1898-1976. Organic Architecture, Art and Design.
Place.- Caixa Forum Madrid, Paseo del Prado 36, Madrid, Spain.
Dates.- From the 30th of September, 2015 to the 10th of January, 2016.
Schedule.- From Monday to Sunday, including holidays, from 10 to 20h.
Price.- 4 €, free for "la Caixa" clients. The 9th of November will be free for all visitors.

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Wolfsburg Cultural Center, Germany, Alvar Aalto, 1958–1962, Alvar Aalto Museum. Photography © Leonardo Mosso, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2014.

Finnish Pavillion at the World Fair in New York, 1939.

Armchair Paimo 41, Alvar Aalto, 1932, Vitra Design Museum. Photography © Jürgen Hans, VEGAP, Barcelona, 2015.

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ALVAR AALTO

Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) qualified as an architect from Helsinki Institute of Technology (later Helsinki University of Technology and now part of the Aalto University) in 1921. He set up his first architectural practice in Jyväskylä. His early works followed the tenets of Nordic Classicism, the predominant style at that time. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he made a number of journeys to Europe on which he and his wife Aino Marsio, also an architect, became familiar with the latest trends in Modernism, the International Style.

The pure Functionalist phase in Aalto’s work lasted for several years. It enabled him to make an international breakthrough, largely because of Paimio Sanatorium (1929-1933), an important Functionalist milestone. Aalto had adopted the principals of user-friendly, functional design in his architecture. From the late 1930s onwards, the architectural expression of Aalto’s buildings became enriched by the use of organic forms, natural materials and increasing freedom in the handling of space.

From the 1950s onwards, Aalto’s architectural practice was employed principally on the design of public buildings, such as Säynätsalo Town Hall (1948-1952), the Jyväskylä Institute of Pedagogics, now the University of Jyväskylä (1951-1957), and the House of Culture in Helsinki (1952-1956). His urban design master plans represent larger projects than the buildings mentioned above, the most notable schemes that were built being Seinäjoki city centre (1956-1965/87), Rovaniemi city centre (1963-1976/88) and the partly built Jyväskylä administrative and cultural centre (1970-1982).

From the early 1950s onwards, Alvar Aalto’s work focused more and more on countries outside Finland, so that a number of buildings both private and public were built to his designs abroad. Some of his best-known works include Villa Mairea, Noormarkku, Finland (1937–1939), the Finnish Pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair, Baker House, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (1947–1948), Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland (1949–1966), The Experimental House, Muuratsalo, Finland (1953) or Essen opera house, Essen, Germany (1959–1988).