‘Traccia’ coffee table, circa 1972

Wooden top and brass legs.

Designed by Oppenheim in 1932 and manufactured by Cassina, Italy, in 1972 as part of the ‘Ultramobile’ serial production.

Méret Oppenheim was an artist with a complex personality, a free and instinctive creativity, versatile and willing to experiment with new artistic techniques. After moving to Paris in 1932, she got in contact with all the great masters of Surrealism, such as Arp, Giacometti, Breton, Man Ray, Duchamp and Max Ernst. The latter became her intimate life companion. The Surrealist movement had great influence in Oppenheim’s work but, nevertheless, she could create her own identity without any artistic label or constraint. Her most famous work “Déjeuner en fourrure” (Breakfast in fur), purchased by Alfred H. Barr from Charles Ratton Gallery for the MoMA in New York, dates back to these years. In 1939 in Paris, she took part in an exhibition on “imaginary” furniture with Max Ernst and Leonor Fini; in that context, she presented the famous table with bird’s legs.

The slim-line legs and the taloned feet in polished cast bronze pay homage to the claw-foot furniture of the past. The ‘Traccia’ coffee table was launched in 1971 as part of designer Dino Gavina’s “l’opera d’arte funzionale”, functional artworks that can become everyday objects and whose design is dictated by the function they are conceived for. This inaugurated a new approach of furnishing where surreal objects were adapted for everyday use and led to the creation of the Ultramobile collection manufactured by Cassina.

Dimensions:

68 x 53.5 x 63 H cm / 26.8 x 21.1 x 24.8 H in