E.1027

Notes On The Film

Eileen Gray was born in 1878 to an aristocratic family in the County of Wexford, Ireland, as the youngest of five children. Her mother was an eccentric who loved horse shows and supposedly married a painter to annoy her aristocratic family. Gray was one of the first women to attend Slade Art School in London and soon moved to Paris, the epicentre of the Avant-garde art movements of the 1920s. A private person, she often withdrew from the crowds and, in the solitude of her apartment on Rue Bonaparte, created visionary and courageous works far ahead of their time. 

In everything Eileen Gray did, she would be a «non-conformist», choosing artistic freedom over the restrictions of a system – or relationships. In Paris, she was part of a loose network of primarily Anglo-Saxon artists and sought proximity to female artists who identified as sapphists. She didn‘t see the point in getting married and chose only a few loves to share her life with. 

While sometimes collaborating with other artists and employing workers to execute her ideas, Eileen Gray would always build her prototypes, relentlessly shaping them before she was satisfied. Eileen Gray was ambivalent about exhibiting her work, often not showing up for her own vernissages. In 1922, she opened a gallery, Jean Désert, in Paris with an illustrious clientele of artists, writers, and members of high society. She did not refer to herself as a designer or decorator: her business cards bore the words: “Lacquered screens, lacquered furniture, wooden furniture, dyed materials, lamps, divans, mirrors, carpets, apartment decoration, and installation.” In 1923, she designed the Boudoir de Monte-Carlo for the XIV Salon des artistes décorateurs in Paris. Critics perceived the combination of decorative and modern elements as disturbing and alienating. A response that hurt Gray deeply. 

Eileen Gray met Jean Badovici in the early 1920s. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of the new magazine „L‘Architecture Vivante“ and had a vast network of the most influential architects of the period, including Le Corbusier. The nature of their relationship and collaboration remains enigmatic to this day. They shared a deep friendship and affection for each other and shared their minds to write and build together. A form of discourse they show in „From Eclecticism to Doubt“, an essay published in “L‘Architecture Vivante” in 1929 in which Eileen Gray is very outspoken in her criticism of modern architecture as well as expresses her own views in building differently. Whether their relationship was physical remains their secret, as well as the true reason for Eileen Gray‘s decision to later leave E.1027. 

The seaside villa E.1027 in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin is the fruit of this close collaboration, yet with the unmistakable signature and spirit of Eileen Gray. Its name, E.1027, attests to the complexity of the role played by each in the development of the project: a combination of the first and last names of the architects – E for Eileen, 10 for the J in Jean (the 10th letter of the alphabet), 2 for Badovici and 7 for Gray. E.1027 is an organic entity endowed with a soul, a model of sensitive modernity.

Eileen Gray‘s first contact with Le Corbusier occurred during the early 1920s through Jean Badovici. If each one recognizes the talent of the other in veiled terms, their relations will always remain distant. Even more so when, in 1937/38, after Gray had already left E.1027 to Badovici, Le Corbusier decides to paint imposing frescoes on the interior and exterior walls of E.1027 without informing the designer. In 1952, it was in the shadow of Eileen Gray‘s seaside villa that Le Corbusier chose to build his own house, the wooden cabin Le Cabanon. Right next to a little bistro, “L’étoile de Mer” which is owned by a friend of his. 

By leaving E.1027 in 1931, Eileen Gray would also withdraw from the public limelight. She was 54 by then and felt the need to be alone most of the time. A need manifested in her second house Tempe A Pailla, only twenty minutes away from E.1027, up in the hills of Castellar. A home even smaller than E.1027, but also more elaborate and sophisticated. After an eye operation, she had to leave the hills, which were only accessible by car, and renovated an old vineyard house in St. Tropez. 

Between 1956 and 1975, Eileen Gray assembled a selection of her projects in a portfolio. She included black and white photographs, sketches, architectural plans, elevations, and cross-sections. She highlighted her lacquered furniture and interiors from the 1910s and 1920s, and equally emphasised the Galerie Jean Désert, the villa E.1027, and Tempe à Pailla. She also devoted much of the portfolio to her architectural work, revealing unfinished projects never built. She excluded her painting and photography work: her private world of creation was deliberately kept aside from her career. 

Before 1968, Eileen Gray disappeared almost entirely from the public eye. She would only keep up with a few close relationships, most notably her niece, the artist Prunella Clough. Through an article on E.1027, she is rediscovered and highly celebrated as one of modernity‘s most influential artists and architects. Before she died in 1976, at the age of 98, she asked her niece to destroy all her correspondence once she was gone. All that should remain was her work.