Clara Porset
Clara Porset (1895-1981) was one of the key figures in the development of Mexican design. Born in Cuba into a very wealthy family, she had the opportunity to travel abroad several times in her youth to study design, first in the United States and then in Europe, where she met Walter Gropius and the founding group of the Bauhaus. From 1928 to 1932 she was based in Paris, where she continued to study and worked with the architect and designer Heri Rapin. After returning to Cuba, in 1935 she was forced to take refuge in Mexico due to the tensions caused by her progressive political views. There she met and married the painter Xavier Guerrero, who had a great influence on her style: thanks to him Clara Porset began to take an interest in Mexican popular culture and pre-Columbian art, integrating these ideas into her work as a designer. In 1940, the two participated jointly in the MoMA competition in New York “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” with a popular series of low-cost “peasant furniture” and were among the protagonists of the lively cultural life of Mexico City throughout the decade alongside figures such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. However, it was in the 1950s that Clara Porset achieved real success, collaborating on the creation of furnishings for projects by the greatest Mexican architects of the time such as the gardens of the Hotel Pierre Marqués in Acapulco (1956), designed by Luis Barragán, or a villa in Cuernavaca (1952) designed by Mario Pani. Also in the same decade, Industrias Ruiz Galindo, the largest furniture manufacturer in Mexico, put several of her series of low-cost bestsellers into production. After the 1959 revolution in Cuba, Clara Porset was able to return to her homeland and Fidel Castro assigned her the project of designing furniture for several universities and public institutions, but she later returned to Mexico where she was head of the newly founded design department at the Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura, which she occupied until her death. Since 1993, the most important national award given to Mexican design students has been named after Clara Porset. Today, the Mexican brand Luteca produces most of her creations, including the famous Butaque armchair (1957), which is also in the permanent collection of the MoMA in New York. In 2022, the famous Italian outdoor brand Paola Lenti presented the acclaimed Jardín collection, awarded with a Wallpaper* Award, an updated and revised version of a collection of outdoor furniture designed by Clara Porset in 1956.