Jacques Grange
Jacques Grange was born in 1944 in Saint-Amand-Montrond a town right in the center of France. From the age of eight, Grange studied art in Paris and at 15 he left high school to attend the École Boulle, where he studied gilding, plaster carving, cabinetmaking and upholstery. After four years, he moved on to the École Camondo to specialize in interior design.
For his first job, Grange worked in the offices of the legendary designer Henri Samuel, who had restored the Empire rooms at Versailles and revamped the Château de Ferrières for Marie-Hélène and Guy de Rothschild. In 1968, Grange was hired as a draftsman in the interior design office of the Parisian antiquaire Didier Aaron, who quickly encouraged him to supervise projects himself.
His first important client was the twin sister of the Shah of Iran, Princess Ashraf, for whom he decorated both an apartment in Paris and a house in the south of France. It was in 1971 that Grange first met the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, whom he describes as his most “enriching” client. “With him, everything was possible,” says Grange. Among other things, they collaborated on the couturier’s villa in Marrakech, styled after a traditional riyadh, and the Proust-themed Château Gabriel, near Deauville, in Normandy, whose walls Grange had painted to resemble Monet’s water lilies.
“Jacques Grange is one the greatest interior designers of our time. His taste is unique. He avoid decorating clichés. That's why his interiors are timeless”
Mathilde Meyer, public relations for Christian Dior in France, declares “Jacques is one the greatest interior designers of our time!”. “His taste is unique. He avoids decorating clichés. That’s why his interiors are timeless,” she adds. Terry de Gunzburg, the creative director of Yves Saint Laurent Beauté, for whom Grange has created homes, says “He is the only person who has the gift to conjure up interiors that look as if they’ve never been decorated”.
Giancarlo Giammetti, business and life partner of Valentino Garavani, bought a sleek Manhattan penthouse a couple of years after he retired from the company and enlisted the gifted French interior designer Jacques Grange to decorate it. . The floor-to-ceiling glass walls fill the apartment with an abundance of light and offer spectacular, panoramic vistas of Manhattan and Long Island. The indoor views of the museum-quality paintings by Picasso, David Hockney, Cy Twombly, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Richard Prince are rather impressive too.
The personal collection of Jacques Grange was offered at Sotheby’s in Paris on 21 November, 2017. The sale comprises a mix of modern and contemporary art, 20th century design, photographs, antiques, 19th century drawings and Symbolist works, assembled with erudition, sensitivity and a light touch. The collection features works by leading artists such as Damien Hirst, Jean-Michel Frank, Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, Hector Guimard, Fernand Léger, Donald Judd, Alberto and Diego Giacometti, Yves Tanguy, Alexandre Noll, Archibald Knox, Victor Brauner, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Paul Klee, Armand-Albert Rateau, Max Ernst, Eileen Gray, David Hockney, Joseph Hoffman, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro and Alexander Calder.
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