ABSTRACT
Although Perret’s teaching provided the spine of his architectural training,
much of Ernö’s education came by less formal routes. For a young man with
enthusiasm for art and design, Paris in the 1920s was the most exciting city
on Earth. Ernö’s contacts gave him the chance to mingle freely with many of
the most influential designers and artists of the twentieth century. His friend-
ships with architects such as Pierre Jeanneret and Jean Badovici led to new
contacts and friendships. His friend the painter Amédée Ozenfant, co-editor
Monsourit, a cube-shaped building designed by Le Corbusier. Here Ernö met
and befriended many artists. Acquaintances and friendships were then re-
newed in the Dôme and the Flore. A photograph by Kertész from 1926 shows
Ernö, a cigarette in his mouth, outside the Dôme with the painter Marie
Vassilieff, who had been Matisse’s pupil, the Hungarian painter Lajos Tihanyi,
and a woman called Dora, who was a friend of Berenice Abbott.1 Ernö knew
Alexander Calder (famous for his surreal mobiles) and would call regularly
on Braque and Arp. He was a good friend of the poet Paul Eluard, the artist
Max Ernst and the model and photographer Lee Miller. He met Lee Miller on
her first visit to Paris in 1925 when she attended a theatre school on the rue
de Sèvres run by Ladislas Medgyes; in later years she lived around the corner
from him in Hampstead.2 While in Paris he also met Toulouse-Lautrec’s
nephew Tapies de Celeyran who was studying with Ozenfant. Charlotte
Perriand, who designed furniture with Le Corbusier, was a personal friend,
and Eileen Gray was an acquaintance. On one of Oskar Kokoschka’s visits to
Paris, Ernö and he were rivals for the affections of a beautiful Swedish
student. With such inspiring company it is hardly surprising that Ernö was
happy to extend his student days to well over a decade.
