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Nathalie Du Pasquier 🔍

Artist, Designer (1957 - Present)

Nathalie Du Pasquier is a French artist and designer, born in Bordeaux in 1957. She was a founding member of the influential Memphis Group in Milan in the early 1980s, contributing significant designs for textiles, furniture, and objects. After the Memphis Group disbanded, she shifted her focus primarily to painting, developing a distinct abstract and figurative style.

Mentors & Influences (Looking Backward)

8%
Gustave Adolphe Anker
Painter
His early 20th-century paintings, characterized by their flattened perspectives, strong outlines, and decorative application of color and pattern, present a proto-modernist graphic sensibility that resonates with Du Pasquier's two-dimensional explorations.
3%
Bruno Munari
Artist and designer
Munari's emphasis on geometric abstraction, vibrant colors, and a playful yet rigorous approach to form and function resonates with Du Pasquier's exploration of basic shapes and visual language.
5%
Aldo Rossi
Architect, Theorist
Rossi's use of archetypal forms, simplified architectural elements, and a graphic, almost illustrative quality in his drawings and designs offers a parallel to Du Pasquier's bold, geometric compositions and representations of space.
5%
Barbara Radice
Writer, Critic, Designer
As the primary intellectual voice of Memphis, Radice's critical framework and curated exhibitions provided the conceptual environment in which Du Pasquier developed her designs and art.
11%
Frederick Hurten Rhead
Ceramic Artist, Industrial Designer
His experimental approach to applying bold, often repetitive geometric and stylized patterns onto ceramic objects demonstrates an early mastery of surface decoration that anticipates Du Pasquier's fusion of graphic design with sculptural forms.
16%
Riccardo Dalisi
Architect, Designer, Artist
His radical exploration of 'poor design' and deliberately naive, almost childish forms in furniture and objects, often using found materials and bold outlines, provided an aesthetic precursor to the playful, anti-establishment spirit Du Pasquier embraced with Memphis.
5%
Piet Mondrian
Painter
Mondrian's rigorous geometric abstraction and use of primary colors, though more rigid, laid foundational aesthetic principles for Du Pasquier's structured compositions and bold color schemes.
13%
Ettore Sottsass
Designer, Architect
Sottsass, as the founder of the Memphis Group, directly mentored and collaborated with Du Pasquier, establishing the post-modern aesthetic of bold colors and unconventional forms that defined her early career.
12%
Carl Otto Czeschka
Designer, Illustrator, Painter
His innovative use of simplified, almost childlike geometric shapes and strong outlines in decorative designs for textiles and children's books laid an early foundation for a playful, graphic modernism that Du Pasquier later explored.
9%
Ethel Reed
Illustrator, Poster Artist
Her innovative use of bold outlines, flattened forms, and decorative geometric backgrounds in early poster art, though rooted in Art Nouveau, demonstrates a graphic sensibility that anticipates Du Pasquier's directness and strong visual impact.
3%
Paul Klee
Artist (Painter)
Klee's exploration of childlike forms, symbolic patterns, and a whimsical approach to abstraction aligns with Du Pasquier's playful geometric designs and direct, unpretentious aesthetic.
8%
Alessandro Mendini
Designer, Architect, Theorist
Mendini's critical and playful approach to design, reinterpreting everyday objects and historical forms with bold colors and patterns, set a theoretical and aesthetic precedent for Du Pasquier's work within the Memphis context.