Anne and Vincent Corbière, partners in art and life, have been exhibiting their quietly elegant design pieces since the late 1990s, drawing upon decades of combined training and expertise in textile design, woodworking, and furniture making to realize their gracefully crafted collaborative works. Anne, originally from the American Pacific Northwest, studied French Literature in Seattle and Montpellier, then worked in costuming for stage and film in the Bay Area, London, and Paris. Going on to study woven textile design at l’Atelier National de l’Art Textile in Paris, she created work for the haute couture and luxury fashion houses of Balenciaga, Chanel, Christian Dior, Givenchy, Christian Lacroix, and Roger Vivier before turning her focus to interior design and architecture, working with top industry names such as Chahan, Demisch-Danant, Muriel Brandolini, Jacques Grange, Peter Marino, Muse Enterprises, and Michael Smith. Vincent grew up in Nîmes in southern France, where omnipresent classical influences remain from its past as a regional capital of the Roman Empire. Trained in woodworking and furniture making by the medieval French crafts guild Les Compagnons du Devoir in Nîmes and Montpellier, then classical guitar making at a specialized college in London, he opened a luthier workshop in Paris while continuing to explore painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture, later working on background paintings for photographer, perfumer and makeup artist Serge Lutens. Vincent began researching and producing his first furniture and sculpture pieces in the early 1990s, holding his debut solo exhibition at Galerie de Pierre Passebon in 1993. The duo’s one-off creations seamlessly merge their individual specialties, ranging from lamps, consoles, seating, tables, and screens to decorative sculptures and mobiles. Their inviting furnishings in wood, metal, and textiles impart warmth and luxury through softly opulent color palettes of earth and jewel tones. Anne composes textures and colors, creating graphic narratives by way of rhythm and contingency, woven into fabrics with staccatos of light. Her fine woven upholstery is spun from an array of natural fibers such as wool, silk, cotton, linen, and rattan, as well as innovative applications of materials including vinyl, woven gold and silver polyamide, and leather. Vincent creates sculptural frames in brass, bronze, iron or wood. He favors woods native to France and Europe such as alder, beech, linden, pear, walnut, and yew, and occasionally works in ebony. Retaining unique marks and blemishes with the intent to reveal the personality of each piece of wood, his colors are natural or formed via oxidation, an historical technique which transforms or enriches natural tannins to create enduring luminous colors. Anne is the co-founder of l’Atelier du Haut Anjou, which offers training and initiation in diverse textile arts, and is a lecturer at Institut Français de la Mode in Paris. Anne and Vincent have been exhibiting their work at Twenty First Gallery since 2011.
