Rene Herbst

RENÉ HERBST (1891-1982) Architect, furniture designer
A pioneer of modernity in France from the early 1920s, René Herbst belonged to a limited avant-garde who was able to identify the aesthetic possibilities of industrial materials such as glass and steel very early on. Nicknamed “the iron man" because of his collaboration with the Technical Office for the Use of Steel (OTUA), his furniture and fittings make extensive use of these new materials which make it possible to create a new formal language. He is a founding member of the Union of Modern Artists (UAM) of which he will be a member of the steering committee, then president. His last major architectural achievement was the OTUA Pavilion at the Moscow International Exhibition in 1961.

René Herbst studied architecture in Paris and Frankfurt and then worked as a decorator and designer. He founded the Etablissements René Herbst and produced his own creations.
At the end of the First World War, he devoted himself to the creation of furniture and to the problems posed by housing and architectural order. He exhibited his work for the first time at the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs from 1921. His first creations show the influence of the Arts & Crafts and Jugendstil movements. This work is in keeping with the style of the time, which he nevertheless quickly abandoned.

1925 was a pivotal year for him: he participated in the International Exhibition of Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris, where this time he showed a more marked attachment to the search for modernity. He advocates the industrialization of furniture with the use of metal (especially nickel-plated tubing), glass and rubber. He presents different models in his own shop. He also became a founder and member of the first steering committee of the Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM) alongside Francis Jourdain, Hélène Henry, Robert Mallet-Stevens and Raymond Templier. He organized and staged the group's first exhibition at the Pavillon de Marsan. On the death of Mallet-Stevens, he became president of the group.
Recognized architect-decorator, René Herbst also carried out some prestigious arrangements, for the private mansion of the Princess Aga Khan (1931-1933), for the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg (dining room furniture in 1928), for the Maharajah of Indore, but also shops (particularly for the goldsmith Jean Puiforcat, boulevard Haussman, 1936), restaurants, cabins of ocean liners (1934) and libraries.