Segunda maqueta de la Maison Suspendue, 1939.

The Centre Pompidou has organized the first monographic exhibition on the American-turned-French architect Paul Nelson, the cue being the centenary of his arrival in Paris. In this way it continues the multifaceted view of the Modern Movement that it presented in 2018 with ‘UAM, une aventure moderne.’

Paul Nelson, born in Chicago in 1895, studied literature at Princeton and later architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts. His dilettante spirit led him to frequent the company of artists, writers, and engineers, contacts which ultimately informed his work. He was friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald and also with the painters Georges Braque and Jean Hélion, who were influential in defining his architectural identity and his criticism of functionalism, respectively. He was trained in structural reason by Auguste Perret, and had Oscar Nitzchke and Ernő Goldfinger as learning companions...[+]