Sculptor and designer Paul Evans is arguably the most prolific and imaginative American artist of the second half of the 20th century. For more than twenty years, he was the man who forced himself to explore a new technique every six months in order to push back the boundaries of creation.
His career, however, got off to a fairly conventional start. Studying at the School for American Craftsmen in Rochester, New York, then at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, he became a silversmith in Old Sturbridge Village, a living museum that recreates rural New England life in the early 19th century.
Tired of overly academic craftsmanship, he approached the designer Phillip Lloyd Powell, (Hanging cabinet, walnut, €25,000 / €35,000) a close associate of the American Craft Studio, which included Wharton Esherick and George Nakashima. Lloyd Powell, who opened a showroom in New Hope (Pennsylvania) in 1951, agreed to exhibit bronze urns by the young artist, then aged eighteen. Their collaboration lasted more than a decade and produced some of the two designers' finest pieces. Together, they designed the famous Fish-scale series. The “Studio years” were those of metal, perforated, wavy, verdigris or Argenta.
Paul Evans' styles seemed to know no bounds. In 1964, he joined Directional Furnitures, the first American company to produce contemporary Made in the USA design. He designed over 800 pieces for the company, from its beginnings until 1982. The pieces presented in the sale stem from this association: the ‘Patchwork’ Console in copper, steel, pewter and slate (€6,000/9,000) and his famous furniture designed from a mixture - at first sight improbable - of bronze and resin. The process, which will see the creation of the PE 141 swivel armchair (€10,000/15,000), the mirror (€3,000/4,000) and the cabinet (€15,000/20,000) has transformed, according to art historian Todd Merrill, “furniture into art, fusing functionality and artistic expression.”
