Michel Mortier

Background

Michel Mortier was born in Paris in 1925.

Education

He was admitted to the École des arts appliqués à l’industrie (School of Industrial Art), where he studied under René Gabriel and Louis Sognot.

Career

He joined the Studium-Louvre in 1944, the workshop for modern decorative art run by Etienne-Henri Martin for the Grands Magasins du Louvre department store. The workshop produced designs for the growing number of customers who wanted modern styles of decoration. Mortier was discovered by Marcel Gascoin, a central figure in French post-war design who surrounded himself with young talent to produce furniture sets.

In 1949 Gascoin founded ARHEC, Aménagement rationnel de l"habitation et des collectivités (Rational Improvement of Housing and Communities), to produce and distribute furniture sets.

From 1949 to 1954 Michel Mortier was the first director of Arhec. That year he formed an association called the Atelier de Recherche Plastique (ARP: Plastic Research shop) with Pierre Guariche and Joseph-André Motte, whom he had met in Gascoin"s studio.

The ARP had an exhibit at the Salon des arts ménagers in 1954, where Mortier showed a modular storage unit with an ingenious assembly system that was the origin for a range of products by Minvielle, a leading brand in the 1950s and 1960s. The ARP partnership broke up in 1957.

Mortier became artistic director of the store Louisiana Maison Française 55, and designed many products for leading manufacturers including chairs for Steiner and lights for Disderot and Verre Lumière.

In 1959 Mortier founded his own interior design agency, the Habitation esthétique industrielle mobilier. He moved to Canada where he was introduced to graphisme in Montreal and taught at JM Blier Furniture & Design. He also worked as a freelance journalist in his spare time.

He participated in the Expo 67 in Montreal.

Self-taught, Mortier designed several elegant private homes in the 1970s, and in 1977 obtained a diploma as an architect from the Île-de-France regional architecture council. He taught interior design at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, the École des arts appliqués and the École supérieure d’arts graphiques Penninghen.

He became a painter towards the end of his life. Michel Mortier died on 22 May 2015 at the age of 90.

Achievements

• Mortier won the Gold Medal at the Milan Triennale in 1954. In 1963 he won the Prix René Gabriel, awarded annually to the designer of a furniture series that combined quality and economy.