Eileen Gray

Eileen Gray, full name Kathleen Eileen Moray Gray (Enniscorthy, 9 August 1878 – Paris, 31 October 1976), was an Irish furniture designer and architect, considered a pioneer of the aesthetics of the International Style.

Origins and studies
Born into a wealthy and aristocratic family in south-east Ireland, Eileen Gray was the youngest of five children. Her parents, Eveleen Pounden Gray and James McLaren Gray, were of Scottish descent. Her father, James, was an amateur painter and encouraged his daughter to take up painting, taking her to Italy and Switzerland to paint from life, which helped the girl's style to mature. Eileen Gray spent much of her childhood at her family's home in Ireland or in South Kensington in London. Thanks to her father, in 1898 she was able to attend the Slade School of Fine Art, where she studied painting, at the age of twenty. She was one of the first students admitted to the institution and, during her studies, she met Jessie Gavin and Kathleen Bruce. In 1900, the year of her father's death, Eileen Gray went to Paris for the first time with her mother, where she was able to visit the Universal Exhibition, being influenced by the new Art Nouveau style. Gray especially admired the works of Charles Rennie Mackintosh which she saw exhibited at the Universal Exhibition for the first time. Gray decided to move to Paris to study at the Académie Julian and the Académie Colarossi and spent the next five years in Paris, London and Ireland.…Continue on Wikipedia…>>