- Manufacturer
- Indumar
Argentina, Buenos Aires - Title
- Silla Plaka (Folding Chair)
- Date Made
- 1972
- Medium
- Painted plywood
- Dimensions
- Closed: 31 1/2 × 19 11/16 × 1 in. (80 × 50 × 2.5 cm); open: 26 5/8 × 19 5/8 × 19 5/8 in. (67.63 × 49.85 × 49.85 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2025.12
- Collecting Area
- Latin American Art
- Curatorial Notes
In 1972, Ricardo Blanco designed a chair made from a series of cuts in a single sheet of plywood. The clean sculptural and geometric form of the Silla Plaka can be folded back into its original state as a flat piece of wood for easy storage and portability. The name of the chair derives from placa, the Spanish word for sheet and the form in which the multilaminate wood was sold. The smart, simple design and the use of modern materials allowed for easy mass production, and the chair quickly became an icon of modern Argentinian design. The rational cuts and the use of plywood relate to the Concrete and Constructivist movements that dominated Argentina’s art scene in the 1940s and 1950s.
Trained as an architect, Blanco was an important figure in the professionalization of design in Argentina. In addition to his own inventive works, he collaborated in the creation of university design programs in his homeland and was an active teacher and historian, serving as the founding curator of the design collection at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires. Fascinated with the form and function of chairs, Blanco designed more than 240 of them, of which the Silla Plaka remains one of his most innovative.
Rachel Kaplan
2024