Chess Design

Art nouveau, secession, surrealism, Fluxus, Pop art: most of the great movements that succeeded one another found an echo in the creation of chess sets.

A true mirror of 20th century creation, this book presents in chronological order exceptional documentation on chess sets created by artists, designers, architects and craftsmen. On the borderline between the plastic and decorative arts, these chessboards were made by the great names of the art, design and architecture scene - Alexandre Rodtchenko, Jean-Michel Frank, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, and, more recently, Yoko Ono, Robert Filliou, Yayo Kusama, Victor Vasarely, Zaha Hadid, Frank Ghery, Damian Hirst - as well as by anonymous artists.

Through 300 chessboards, this book offers a new point of view on the evolution of the techniques and materials used to create chessboards: wood, glass and ceramics, then, from the 1950s, steel, plastic and composite materials.