André Bloc, 1896-1966

Engineer, architect, artist, publisher and critic, in 1930 André Bloc founded the magazine L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, which drew the lessons of post-war critical debate and promoted “International Modernism”. He then set up the magazine Art d’Aujourd’hui (1949), later Aujourd’hui (1955-67), which championed the unity of the arts. In 1951, Bloc aligned himself with the Spatialist movement, joining with Félix del Marle to found the Espace group, intended to promote the integration of art and architecture so as “to bring about the indispensable collaboration between painter, sculptor and architect”. Bloc maintained a syncretic dialogue with the Modern avantgardes, with 1920s Neo-Plasticism in particular, before developing in the late 1950s a sculptural approach to architecture. During the Fifties, Bloc made his house at Meudon a laboratory for research into the unity of the arts, designing furniture, colour schemes and much else himself, achieving the symbiosis of art and architecture that he sought in the Habitacles he built in the garden from 1962, and in his house at Carboneras in Spain (1966).

Marie-Ange Brayer and Anne-Marie Zucchelli