Pascal Mourgue (1943-2014)

Pascal Mourgue, born in 1943 in Neuilly-sur-Seine and died in 2014 in Montreuil, was a French designer who came from a family largely involved in the world of design, seeking new applications for established techniques. He graduated from the École Boulle and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, as did Olivier Mourgue, his brother, whom he admired. The designer has received multiple national and international awards, such as the 1996 Grand Prix National de la Création Industrielle from the Ministry of Culture.

The designer's style, asserted with discretion, reflects a desire to escape the principles of modernity to search continuously for the furniture that differs to move towards simplicity. His work is distinguished by an economy of means. This philosophy, a purity of line, is inseparable from drawing, Mourgue's favored way for designing. From this drawing emerges the need to really build the furniture. According to him, what is interesting "is to realize", since "working directly on the material allows [...] to go further, and especially to make discoveries possible". Thus, his conception of design is a synthesis of necessity and efficiency.

Mourgue maintained privileged relationships with industrialists and publishers, being in search of complicity and reciprocal curiosity, but above all of partners with perfect knowledge of the technique. He thus designed pieces for various publishers such as Cinna, which moreover organized a tribute following the death of the designer in 2015, but also the manufacturer Scarabat, or the company Fermob for whom he designed the Lune d’Argent collection, which received the Cartier foundation prize and was highlighted by the Centre Georges Pompidou.

At the end of his career, Pascal Mourgue turned to artistic creation through drawings, sculptures and paintings, influenced by the sculptor Ossip Zadkine whom he met in his youth.