Wall light “A901”
Manufactured by Valaistustyö.
Finland, 1950s.
Painted metal, Brass.

Measurements
32 x 17 x 20h cm
12,6 x 6,7 x 7,9h in

Biography
Alvar Aalto (b. 18989 - d. 1976, Helsinki) was a Finnish architect of the 20th century. He studied at the Helsinki University of Technology. In 1921, after completing his studies, he made an important trip to northern Europe, together with Aino Marsio, followed by many others to Central Europe and Italy. During this recent period he took part in the avant-garde thinking of the time, particularly the Bauhaus movement, where he established a close relationship with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. He collaborated with prominent architects such as Le Corbusier, Ser and Erik Bryggman, from whom he received a more functional modernist influence, moving away from the Nordic classicism that marked his early works.

In 1940 he returned to Finland after the end of the first Russo-Finnish war, thus leaving his post as professor of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During the Second World War he came into contact with Nazi classicism through its main representative, Albert Speer. Between 1946 and 1948 he lived in the United States, subsisting as an architect and teacher. It was at this time that he met Frank Lloyd Wright.

During the course of his extensive work, he argued that all the arts were linked to each other and that in this way they were participants in his way of projecting "The three art forms of architecture, painting and scupulture are linked to one another in that they are all manifestations of the human spirit based on matter".

He was very meticulous in his designs, leaving an important legacy of furniture creations, among which are the Paimio Chair or Model No. 41 (1930-1931), the Stool Model No. 60 and 69 (1932-1933), the Y-leg Stool (1946-1947) or the Lounger Model No. 43 and chair Model No. 406 (1936), all produced by Artek.