This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  A designer and painter, Donald Deskey was born in Blue Earth, Minnesota
and established a career in New York City where he became especially
known for his sumptuous, elaborate art-deco interior design of Radio
City Music Hall in the late 1920s. One of his earliest supporters
in New York was Edith Halpert, owner of the first American art gallery
dedicated to sales of modernist artists. A major influence on his
style was his visit in 1925 to Paris to the Exposition Internatonale
des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. This event, which
featured modern, streamlined design, was key to the future direction of
his career.
Having been chosen by the
Rockefeller Center architects for Radio City, Deskey was in charge of the overall design
including the furnishings. One of the unique features he
introduced was the wallpaper in the mens' lounge, which was titled Nicotine and was printed in tobacco brown on aluminum foil paper.
Described
as dapper "with his spats, clipped mustache, and hair so slick and flat
it shone like patent leather", (Pollock, 151) he had a career that
continued into the 1950s. He was also a fine-art painter who did
hard-edge abstraction.
From
1927, he was the president of Donald Deskey Associates, Industrial
Design Consultants. His clients included Saks and Company, for
whom he did window designs; and various exhibitors at
the New York World's Fair. His first home commission was with
Adam Gimbel, president of Sak's, for whom he designed a futuristic
apartment with copper ceilings, cork walls and stainless steel in the
hallways. He was highly influential in
establishing United States dominance in the field of international
design after World War II.
Signature furniture designs of
Deskey's included pieces with tubular steel frames and sinuous steel
chairs that were symbols of modern living. A New York critic,
seeing Deskey chairs at Edith Halpert's Downtown Gallery in Greenwich
Village in 1917 wrote: "the chairs look a little like the letter
U lying down on its side, runnng along the floor and curving up to form
the front. . . .They are comfortable, but whether they are really
beautiful as chairs is a question." (Pollock, 117) Forming a
company called Deskey-Vollmer, he oversaw the design of mass-produced
furniture including aluminum lamps and other items inspired by Art Deco
and made of 'newfangled' material such as Flexwood, Bakelite and
Formica.
Donald Deskey studied at the University of
California, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Students League in
New York, and in Paris at the Academy Grande Chaumiere.
Among his references is an article in Antiques magazine, May 1987: "The Screens and Screen Designs of Donald Deskey" by Michael Komanecky.
Sources include:
Dan Klein, "All Color Book of Art Deco"
Treadway Toomey Galleries, Oak Park, Illinois
Peter Hastings Falk, Editor, Who Was Who in American Art
Lindsay Pollock, The Girl With the Gallery
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Donald Deskey is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Art Deco
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