Palm Springs Modernism Week 2010 is being kicked off by a Walk of Fame Star Dedication and Reception in honor of Architect Albert Frey at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, February 11th. Later that day, the Palm Springs Modernism Show will host its gala and preview from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.; the show will continue throughout the weekend. Albert Frey, the Flamingo of Palm Springs Modernism, was born in Zurich, Switzerland and was influenced by the Dutch De Stijl movement, the German Bauhaus school and movement, and the modernism movement developing in Brussels. In 1928, Frey secured a position in the Paris atelier of the noted International Style architect Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. During his period of working for Le Corbusier, Frey worked on the Villa Savoye project and other significant projects. That same year, he left the atelier to take up work in the United States, but continued to maintain a friendship with Le Corbusier for many years. In September 1930, Frey returned to New York from another visit to France. Frey, the first architect in America to have worked directly with Le Corbusier, now began working with the American architect A. Lawrence Kocher. The pair worked on four collaborations through 1935, and reunited briefly in 1938. From 1935 to 1937 Frey worked with John Porter Clark, a Cornell-educated architect. Significant buildings by Frey during this period include his private residences, Frey house I and II, the Loewy House, built for industrial designer Raymond Loewy, the 1952 Palm Springs City Hall, the Cree House II, the now abandoned North Shore Yacht Club on the northeastern shore of the Salton Sea, the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway Valley Station and the iconic “flying wedge” canopy of the Tramway Gas Station at the foot of the entrance to the tramway on the northern edge of Palm Springs, now used as a visitor’s center. In addition to the architect tribute, there will be a home tour, a vintage fashion show, an architecture and design film series, an exhibition of vintage travel trailers, a slide show of retro Americana by Charles Phoenix, and a silent auction during the Modernism Show. This is the official kick-off of the Modernism season which culminates in December with the Art Deco to Modernism Show in San Francisco. The Palm Springs Modernism Show will feature 75 dealers from featuring items from every design movement of the 20th century from early 1900s to 1970s. The showstopper at last year’s Palm Springs Modernism Show was a giant bug-eyed jungle gym in the space of Neptina’s Lianne Gold. The weekend show hours are Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Palm Springs Convention Center is located at 277 N. Avenida Caballeros, Palm Springs, CA 92262. Show admission is $15 per person for Saturday and Sunday; good for return entry all weekend. For more information, call Dolphin Promotions at (708) 366-2710.
