Biography of Verner Panton

Beginning and training

Verner Panton was born on February 13, 1926 in Brahesborg-Gamtofte on the island of Funen in Denmark. At the age of 18, the Dane moved to Odense and served in the military for two years. At the same time, he attended technical school, also in Odense, from 1944 to 1947. Following this, Verner Panton studied architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (1947-1951) and began to study the psychology of color. During his studies, Tove Kemp crossed his path. The stepdaughter of architect and designer Poul Henningsen, she and Panton married in 1950, but the marriage broke down after just one year. Their son died young. What remained was the friendship with Poul Henningsen, who remained Panton's mentor until his death in 1967.

Apprenticeship years with Jacobsen

In 1950, at the end of his studies, Verner Panton joined the architecture and design office of the renowned Arne Jacobsen, whom he had met through his father-in-law, for two years. Entrusted with furniture design, he co-designed the Ant, one of Jacobsen's most famous chairs . Years later, he would say about this not always easy time: "The older I get, the more respect I have for Arne Jacobsen, even though I have a different opinion on many things. When you consider all that Arne Jacobsen has achieved in many areas, there is no one in the world who can beat him. Of course, his skill was accompanied by talent, energy, economy and luck. And perhaps it was all a little too clean. But I have never learned as much from anyone as I did from Arne Jacobsen. Including being uncertain and never giving up."

Office in the van

Verner Panton and his former colleague Hans Ove Barfoed spend three years traveling through Europe in a VW bus converted into a drawing office. In this way, he is self-sufficient and can put his diverse impressions directly on paper. He produced numerous designs for buildings and interiors. Panton also immersed himself in the international design scene. He met colleagues, manufacturers and dealers.

Start with chairs

Fritz Hansen, the renowned Danish furniture manufacturer, builds Verner Panton's first mass-produced furniture. In 1955, the Bachelor and Tivoli Chairs are launched on the market. A detachable weekend house, which can also be used as a garage, is produced in small series in 1957. Verner Panton would revise this design twice more in 1976 and 1979. The first major commission for the Designer The first major commission was the extension and design of the Kom-Igen restaurant on the Langeso Park estate on his home island of Funen. The client was his father, who ran the restaurant as a tenant and had recognized and wanted to promote his son's potential. Verner Panton designed the interior in five coordinated shades of red. The clothing of the service staff is also taken into account in the overall concept. A novelty in 1958. The seating consists of the Tivoli Chair, now renamed Panton One, and the Cone Chair. The latter is presented to the public for the first time. As Series K, K being an abbreviation for Kraemmerhusstole, the seating caused a sensation and was produced by the Danish company Plus-linje in 1959, the following year. In the same year, the collaboration with the Danish companies Unika Væv, also Unika Vaev, for textiles and Louis Poulsen for lights began.

Fabric design from Denmark

At the beginning of the 1950s, the Danish textile company Unika Vaev gave several (compatriots) from the art and design scene an artistic platform to realize textile designs. Gunnar Aagaard Andersen, Nanna Ditzel, Finn Juhl - even Verner Panton joins them. Textile entrepreneur Percy von Halling-Koch (1914 to 1992) maintained a lively exchange with his designers. For example, he developed the Hallingdal upholstery fabric together with Nanna Ditzel. The fabric consists of seventy percent virgin wool and 30 percent viscose, which gives it a high degree of durability and color depth. Hallingdal has been produced by the textile company Kvadrat since 1965. According to the Danish company, a large part of the company's success is based on this upholstery fabric. The fabric is also used in Verner Panton design objects. In the book "Danish Modern: Between Art and Design" by Mark Mussari, it says: "Ditzel teamed up with fellow Danish designers Panton and Aagaard Andersen and shared with them a design approach that pushed the boundaries, bringing modernism back into a contemporary context without abandoning certain approaches in terms of material and function."

Art fabric and multidimensionality

In 1960, the first inflatable seats in furniture history were created. Verner Panton had already been working on them during his trips to Europe in 1954. Made of transparent plastic, they allow the viewer to look inside. Both the seamless plastic material and the play with transparency became characteristic of Panton's design.

The great love

While on vacation in Tenerife in 1962, Verner Panton met Marianne Pherson-Oertenheim. They fell in love and married two years later in Basel. Born in Sweden, she already had a daughter, Cecilia Oertenheim, from her first marriage. Two years after the wedding, their daughter Carin was born. The couple seemed to have found each other and stayed together until Panton's death. Marianne and Verner traveled a lot, but kept their base in Basel. In 1972, they bought the vacation home Kullavej in Hornbaek, Denmark, which they sold in 1993. A year later, the Pantons moved into a city apartment in Copenhagen as a second home. Marianne is not only Verner's partner, she also acts as her husband's ambassador and manager, which Verner says suits him very well. The two seem to complement each other perfectly. After the death of her husband, Marianne left their apartment in Basel and also gave up their home in Copenhagen in 1999. Marianne Panton: "After Verner's death, I very quickly felt the need to leave our old apartment together. It was far too big for me. In this new apartment, I first had to adjust to myself and my future without Verner. I didn't know yes what to do next."

The Swiss chapter

Their Swiss chapter began when the Pantons moved from Cannes to Basel in 1963. Willi Fehlbaum, then head of Vitra, had agreed to produce the Panton Chair. The move was necessary to prepare the prototype of the chair for series production. One might think that Panton would have been most likely to find a manufacturer in Scandinavia. Especially as Scandinavian design was booming in the 50s and 60s. "But the furniture manufacturers in Scandinavia always told us that it was not possible to produce this chair. But Verner believed in it, never dropped the idea and found like-minded people at Vitra," says wife Marianne Panton. Further years passed before the Panton Chair Classic 1967 was finally sold.

German workmanship

Two years earlier, in 1965, Gebrüder Thonet AG launched the S Chair. The German furniture manufacturer has specialized in the production of furniture - especially chairs - since the beginning of the 19th century. While the traditional cabinetmaker achieves vibration by sawing, planing or carving from a solid block, Thonet achieves this by bending, i.e. shaping, the rigid wood. Made of laminated wood, Verner Panton had already conceived the stacking chair in 1956. In the same year in which the S Chair finally appeared, he began designing a living landscape. The system furniture, with a square floor plan, was manufactured by Alfred Kill GmbH and Metzeler-Schaum GmbH and sold to customers via Kaufhof in 1967. The modular furniture, with a Perlon cover in the colors brown, orange, red, yellow, blue and turquoise, offers almost unlimited combination possibilities. - A revolution on the furnishing market.

Visionary worlds

A short time later (1968/1969), Verner Panton set another milestone in furniture design with the Living Tower . The sculptural seating furniture, which is made up of two elements, has a total of four seating levels. Also at the end of the 1960s, Designer designed the exhibition on the Drahlon ship (1968) for the chemical company Bayer on the occasion of the Cologne Furniture Fair. Until the mid-1970s, Bayer rented a Rhine steamer and had it furnished by contemporary designers. This was basically advertising for home textiles made of synthetic materials such as Drahlon. At Verner Panton's suggestion, the Drahlon ship was renamed Visiona 0. Visiona 2, in 1970, also becomes Panton's Sowroom. As well as the newly built Spiegel editorial building in Hamburg (1969). To this day, the canteen is largely preserved in its original state. This makes this place a unique document of design history. Just like the circus building in Copenhagen, built in 1885, in whose renovation he was involved as a lighting and spatial consultant in 1984.

Colors and shapes in flow

Examples: the Varna restaurant in Arhus/Denmark (1971) and his private villa in Binningen/Switzerland, which he moved into in 1972. The Living Sculpture that dominates the living room can be seen today at the Center Pompidou in Paris/France. Not forgetting the design of the new Gruner & Jahr publishing house in Hamburg (1973). A commission that was as extensive as the interior design of the Spiegel building four years earlier. Panton's preference for bold colors and geometric shapes is reflected in his extensive work as a textile designer. In the mid-1970s, for example, he created a series of textiles with expressive prints. The Grande, Grafica, Casa or Fiori and Castello collections (all 1975) are just a few examples. They are produced by the company Mira-X AG in Switzerland, with whom Panton has been working since 1971. Cooperation with the Danish manufacturer Fritz Hansen also began in the 1970s for furniture such as System 1-2-3 (1977).

The space-age style

The year is still 1977 and Danish manufacturer Louis Poulsen launches the VP Europa luminaire family developed by Panton. Its base is reminiscent of the Panthella designed back in 1971. The lampshade, however, is mouth-blown from glass. Despite its pleasing shape, it has something extra-terrestrial about it. The Pantopendel, developed in the same year, has a much more space-age feel. It is again based on the VP Globe, which entered the design orbit at the end of the 60s/beginning of the 70s. The Ellipsen Lamp pendant lamps from 1971 and, above all, the Ufo from 1975 also have - as the names suggest - a strong design reference to space. Also daring, because they had never been seen before: With the wall and ceiling luminaires Ring Lamp (1970) and Spion (1971), the Dane dressed entire rooms. "The main purpose of my work is to challenge people to use their imagination," says the technophile Verner Panton. This should not be difficult for anyone in the face of such charismatic luminous objects.

Glory and honor

So much creativity and creative drive does not go unnoticed. In 1979, he was awarded the Møbelprisen in his native Denmark. In the same year, the Swiss Furniture Fair honored him with the special exhibition Pantorama. It impresses with monochrome staged rooms with an object character. In the middle of the fabric-lined Blue Room, for example, Panton placed several Living Tower, naturally in the same color. VP Globe-lights floats above them. Between 1981 and 1986, Designer was awarded the German Selection Prize five times alone. His virtuoso play with colors, forms and functions is once again evident in the renovation of the Copenhagen circus building in 1984. Here, Verner advises Panton on questions of light and color. In Offenbach, he passes on his idealism as a visiting professor at the Hochschule für Gestaltung.

Development of ergonomics

The 1990s could certainly be described as the era of chair development in which Verner Panton played a key role. In 1993/94, he designed Vilbert for the Swedish furniture store Ikea, constructed from four panels screwed together. Together with Vereinigte Spezialmöbelfabriken, or VS-Möbel for short, Panton worked on improving the ergonomics of chairs between 1993 and 1998. The experience gained was bundled under the name Pantoflex. On the basis of dynamic seating, the chairs PantoSwing, PantoMove, PantoFour and PantoStack were created for different areas of use.

Life's work and last exhibition

At the height of his career, Queen Margrete of Denmark awards Designer the Knight's Cross of the Order of Dannebrog for his life's work. Also in 1998, Panton plans the exhibition Light and Color. The retrospective is scheduled to open on September 17 at the Trapholt Museum in Kolding, Denmark. Shortly before this, on September 5, Verner Panton was torn from life. He dies in Copenhagen at the age of 72.

Panton's Pointe

"People get mad at you if you like colors. They also get angry with people with imagination. Most people want what they are used to. But I have to exaggerate to get my point across'," Verner Panton once said. This may often have led to Panton's design being classified as not timeless. However, his young, timeless designs and the great interest in them prove the opposite.