Pierre
Sala

Stage director, furniture creator, interior architect, his life, cut short too soon, left behind a wealth of projects and ideas now ripe for rediscovery.

In 1981, Pierre Sala set up his furniture design workshop above his theater. His creative frenzy was directly inspired by the stage, and he was incapable of separating the two practices. Just like in theater, he saw furniture as an opportunity to explore shortcuts, abstraction, distortion, irony, madness, and humor.

His first collection features geometric shapes and primary colors. Chairs are named after animals. For Pierre Sala, furniture is a show in and of itself. Humor takes center stage; comfort and functionalism are largely secondary. The cabinetmaker in charge of production chose MDF as the main material. The painting was done by an auto body specialist, treated like a car body: the result, thanks to layers of polyurethane paint, resembles a high-gloss lacquer. In 1982, his creations were promoted by the VIA, giving them institutional recognition.

Despite its instantly recognizable style, Pierre Sala’s furniture is – wrongly – often compared to the Memphis aesthetic. While the Italian group and Pierre Sala were contemporaries and shared a taste for geometric forms, what they truly have in common is a shared creative freedom and inventive madness.

At Pulp Galerie, we have a special fondness for several of his pieces: the coffee table and Piscine rug (from 1982 and 1985, respectively), the Mikado series (1985), and the Piranha table (1981).

Today, his creations continue to fascinate and are being rediscovered in many gallery and museum exhibitions in Paris, notably at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs during the fabulous show dedicated to the 1980s.