All Photos By Gail

This strange Wardrobe from 1939 was born of an art movement rather than an interest in the complexities of furniture design. Eugene Berman (1899 – 1972) was a Russian painter and stage designer who associated with the Surrealists.

He exhibited this wardrobe at a show of Surrealist art at the Galerie Drouin in Paris on the eve of the Second World War. Its simple architectural form provides a neutral surface for an unsettling exploration of three-dimensional space. The wardrobe is made of pine and the covered with canvas, onto which paint a varnish were applied.

Photographed in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London