Alvar Aalto: Second Nature - Exhibition review


It was in 1933, in the unlikely location of London’s luxury food purveyor, Fortnum & Mason, that the British had their first taste of the relatively unknown Finnish architect Alvar Aalto and his curvilinear plywood furniture.


Blueprint
Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein
Until 1 March
Review by Cate St Hill

The small exhibition, organised by his friend and editor-in-chief of the Architectural Review, Morton Shand, helped set him on the path to international acclaim. Five years later he had his first solo exhibition at MoMA in New York and had co-founded his own furniture company, Artek.

Now a major retrospective at the Vitra Design Museum is aiming to demonstrate that, while Aalto's work was deeply rooted in Finland and its landscape, he was above all an internationally minded architect with a strong interest in cinema, film and photography. Not merely a provincial architect on the edge of the hubbub of modernist activity in central Europe, he befriended architects abroad, travelled extensively and was a close confidant of the leading photographers and journalists of the day. 'The title, a Second Nature, is to say that actually, this connection to nature is worth a second look,' suggests curator Jochen Eisenbrand. 'Although he practiced all his life in Finland, he was cosmopolitan.'

Savoy vase, Alvar Aalto, 1936. Photo Credit: Vitra Design Museum, Alexander Von Vegesack, DACS 2014
Savoy vase, Alvar Aalto, 1936. Photo Credit: Vitra Design Museum, Alexander Von Vegesack, DACS 2014

Each of the four spaces in the Frank Gehry-designed gallery focuses on different thematic aspects of Aalto's work in a loosely chronological order. It opens with photographs from the family albums of the Aaltos, which bear a striking resemblance to the avant-garde work of their friend László Moholy-Nagy, showing that they were aware of what was going on in the art world.

Aalto's intense interest in contemporary media and theatre informed the projects of his early career. He covered the surfaces of fair pavilions with colourful advertising graphics for the 700-year jubilee of the Finnish city of Turku in 1929 and planned to project an image of the front page of a newspaper on to the window of the Turun Sanomat newspaper headquarters.

Paimio Armchair No 41, Alvar Aalto, 1932. Photo Credit: Vitra Design Museum, Photo: Jürgen Hans, DACS 2014
Paimio Armchair No 41, Alvar Aalto, 1932. Photo Credit: Vitra Design Museum, Photo: Jürgen Hans, DACS 2014

He was even one of the founding members of the first Finnish film club in the mid-Thirties. For the Finnish Pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1939 he would go on to create a dramatic, leaning 12m-long wall incorporating enlarged images as well as a film by Finnish documentary pioneers Heikki Aho and Björn Soldan.

His interest in film helped him understand how we perceive space. Aalto's architecture took not only the practical or functional needs into account, but also the psychological and physiological aspects. This is best shown in one of his most famous projects, the Paimio Sanatorium (1928-32) in southern Finland, for which he designed a bentwood chair to ease the breathing of tuberculosis patients and a bespoke sink to minimise even the smallest of sounds in the patients' rooms (one of which is reconstructed in the exhibition).

Armin Linke, 2014: Maison Louis Carré, Bazoches-sur-Guyonne, France, Alvar Aalto, (1956–1959, 1961–1963).Photo Credit: Armin Linke, DACS 2014
Armin Linke, 2014: Maison Louis Carré, Bazoches-sur-Guyonne, France, Alvar Aalto, (1956-1959, 1961-1963).Photo Credit: Armin Linke, DACS 2014

The relationship between architecture and art was a topic that constantly occupied the attention of Aalto, himself a painter. He was greatly inspired by the kinetic art of his friend Alexander Calder and participated in debates in the Thirties with Fernand Léger, both of whose work is in the exhibition. The organic relief sculptures of Jean Arp, also on show, display a noticeable similarity to Aalto's studies of laminated bentwood, and later the wiggly Savoy vase produced for the Savoy restaurant in Helsinki.

Aalto believed art should be a part of everyday life. For Villa Mairea (1939), situated in a pine forest outside the town of Noormarkku, for example, he designed moveable, hollow partitions to display and store artwork. Aalto liked to quote Léger by saying that the architect is the head of an orchestra, who 'conducts' all of the arts with the aim of creating a harmonious, symphonic whole.

Armin Linke, 2014: Heilig-Geist-Kirche Wolfsburg, Germany, Alvar Aalto, 1960–1963.Photo Credit: Armin Linke, DACS 2014
Armin Linke, 2014: Heilig-Geist-Kirche Wolfsburg, Germany, Alvar Aalto, 1960-1963.Photo Credit: Armin Linke, DACS 2014

One of the strengths of the exhibition is the commission of a set of stunning new photographs of Aalto's buildings by German artist Armin Linke. Indeed, the exhibition would have been just as good, if not better, if it had been given over to these images alone. Dotted around the exhibition, they transport you to his buildings and capture the haptic qualities of his work -- such as the warm, tactile qualities of a material or how light falls through an open window -- in a way that drawings or models simply can't. The images don't idolise his work, nor monumentalise it, but they do portray his buildings as part of the everyday life of people who use them. Says Linke, in the 600-page tome that is the exhibition catalogue: 'Aalto manages to combine cold, glossy materials with warm, light-absorbing ones. That helps mitigate the monumentality of the buildings and creates a certain intimacy. The buildings are friendly. You feel secure and protected.'

Armin Linke, 2014: Viipuri (Vyborg) City Library, Karelia (today Russia), Alvar Aalto, 1927–1935. Photo Credit: Armin Linke, DACS 2014
Armin Linke, 2014: Viipuri (Vyborg) City Library, Karelia (today Russia), Alvar Aalto, 1927-1935. Photo Credit: Armin Linke, DACS 2014

The top, light-filled room, certainly one of the highlights of the exhibition, takes inspiration from Aalto's studio that he designed in 1955 on the outskirts of Helsinki, a short walk from his own home. Four desk-like podiums, modelled on the drafting tables of his office, feature pull-out drawers so visitors can view his original sketches. They show some of his lesser-known work from his later career, including projects in Germany where his humanist understanding of architecture made a strong impression, and even unrealised buildings in the Middle East. Unbeknown to many, he was invited to design a bank and art museum in Baghdad at the same time as Walter Gropius was designing the university and Gio Ponti, the new headquarters of the ministry of development.

It might sound surprising that the exhibition isn't linked to the acquisition of Artek by Vitra last September, but just a happy coincidence. Either way, this exhibition does reveal new and sometimes surprising aspects of Aalto's extensive oeuvre. It also goes some way to illustrate how we have almost taken Aalto's work for granted; his buildings are neither monumental nor imposing, but part of the everyday. They have become second nature.








Progressive Media International Limited. Registered Office: 40-42 Hatton Garden, London, EC1N 8EB, UK.Copyright 2024, All rights reserved.