Nathalie du Pasquier (born 1957, Bordeaux, France) is a Milan-based designer and artist who was a founding member of the 1980s design studio Memphis Group.
Nathalie du Pasquier’s creative design career included works across a wide variety of media, from textiles and clothing to jewelry and furnishings, but in the late 1980s, she shifted her interest from design to art.
From 1975 to 1977, she traveled through Gabon and West Africa. Natalie du Pasquier gained some of her most intense inspiration from this trip. Compelled by the colors and patterns of African design, she returned to Europe and soon after settled in Milan in 1979 to establish her own design practice.
In early 1981, du Pasquier met the designer George Sowden while working at Olivetti, who had already teamed up with Ettore Sottsass at the Memphis Group to investigate novel design approaches. Shortly thereafter, du Pasquier was introduced to the Memphis Group and was asked to join; becoming the youngest member of the group. She worked for them as a designer and produced patterns, textiles, decorated surfaces, and furniture until 1987. The group was known for making work under the motto “form follows fun ».
Since then, her main focus and passion has been painting. Over the past thirty-five years, Du Pasquier has been intrigued by the relationship between objects and the spaces in which they are installed. This ongoing investigation has manifested in paintings, sculptures, designs, patterns, constructions, carpets, books, and ceramics.
Du Pasquier has continued to design textiles, including patterns for clothes, blankets and other bedding, with her husband George Sowden. She considers everything that she has done as raw material for future projects - a work that sets its own limits in each instant but at the same time is always ready to escape the frame of any rules, entering into unknown territory.
