Raymond Subes

Raymond Henri Subes (13 April 1891 – 31 January 1970) was a French decorative artist specializing in ironwork. Generally associated with the Art Deco movement, he has been referred to as one of the greatest French ironworkers of the 20th century.

Life

Raymond Subes was born 1891 in Paris of Jacques Subes (1857–1929) and his wife Marie, née Bouiges (1859–1936). He studied at École Boulle from 1906 to 1910, graduating top of his class, then briefly at École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs under architect Charles Genuys. In 1911 he became a draughtsman for Émile Robert, a pioneer of the revival of artisanal ironworking after decades of dominance of industrial cast iron products, who had just cofounded the Borderel & Robert company in Paris together with industrialist Ernest Borderel. During World War I, Subes served in light infantry, was wounded on 24 August 1914 at Audun-le-Roman, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre and Médaille militaire for having rescued his wounded captain. He was wounded again and demobilized in 1916. From then, Subes worked in a workshop that Émile Robert had established in Enghien-les-Bains near Paris, where he acquired his metalworking skills. He married Adrienne Valadié (1895–1963). They had three children, André (1921–1985), Jacques (1924–2002), and Anne-Marie (who married visual artist Yves Millecamps). In 1919 Subes replaced Émile Robert as artistic director of Borderel & Robert, and rose to chief executive (French: administrateur délégué) after Robert's death in 1924. He also took a professorship at the École Boulle. In 1924, he purchased the Château de Larnagol in southern France, which he kept as a holiday home for the rest of his life. By the 1950s, he also had a weekend home near Orléans. In the 1960s, Raymond Subes moved the production facilities of Borderel & Robert from their Parisian location at rue Damrémont to Saint-Denis. He remained at the company's helm until his death on 31 January 1970 in Étampes, following a car accident two days earlier. He was buried in his family's tomb at the Père Lachaise Cemetery where he joined his parents, stepparents and wife.

Work

Subes left most of his creations unsigned, but became highly recognized for his unique and elegant design style, often inspired by calligraphy. He worked primarily with wrought iron but also bronze, copper, and starting in the 1930s also aluminum, weathering steel and galvanized steel. He worked together with some of the greatest architects and decorators of his time such as Jean Dunand, Jules Leleu, Jean Mayodon, and Michel Roux-Spitz. He produced works for the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in 1925, jointly with Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. For the International Exhibition of 1937, he designed the monumental sliding door of the pavillon du métal, which like most pavilions was demolished after the end of the exhibition. Industrialist Marcel Bloch, founder of Dassault Aviation, purchased the door and had it cut into two unequal pieces: the larger one now adorns Dassault Aviation's head office in Saint-Cloud, on the site where Bloch established a propeller plant in 1938, and the smaller piece is at the Dassault plant in Mérignac, Gironde. Subes made designs for a wide variety of commissions:

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.