Pierre Guariche

On the occasion of the release of his catalog raisonné of Pierre Guariche’s lighting fixtures, the Pascal Cuisinier gallery presented a monographic exhibition on the design of this creator from October 22 to December 5, 2020.
25 years after his death, Pierre Guariche became one of the most famous names in French design. With Joseph André Motte and Pierre Paulin he took the lead of the young generation of the 1950s who renewed the offer of Prouvé, Perriand, Royère etc. On the occasion of his numerous and prestigious projects, this young decorator full of talent and ambition will mark his time by his inventiveness, his rigor and his sense of proportion. With him, nothing is gratuitous and each form, each detail is justified; then comes an aesthetic. With Pierre Disderot he revolutionized domestic lighting in France by inventing the subtle interplay of direct, indirect and reflected light that is still used today.
Pascal Cuisinier has been collecting original documentation and pieces of Guariche for more than 20 years and was thus able to present as early as 2012 a complete exhibition of his lights, a feat impossible to repeat today! Finally, he puts this research into a catalog raisonné of light fixtures that will make it possible to identify those that are truly his.Guariche was also an idealist because even if he was one of the best of his time to whom the mayor of Firminy entrusted the continuity of Le Corbusier’s work, he always wished to offer the best to the greatest number of people and devoted himself, among the first, to serial publishing, an indispensable condition of design.
The gallery presented about fifty of his pieces, some of which were extremely rare, in a retrospective of his “designed” work. The scenography highlighted his collaborations with the best publishers of his time; Meuble T.V. Minvielle, the Gallery M.A.I., Steiner and of course Disderot but also with his friends Joseph André Motte and Michel Mortier to the seing of the A.R.P.