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Vladimir Kagan
One of the legends of 20th century American design, the designer and architect Vladimir Kagan (Worms, 1927 – Palm Beach, 2016) is mainly known for the creation of iconic sofas such as the Omnibus and the Serpentine, so much so that he was nicknamed “the king of sofas”. The son of a Jewish cabinetmaker, at just 11 years old Vladimir emigrated from Germany with his family, escaping Nazi persecution and arriving in the United States. After graduating from the School of Industrial Art in New York, he attended architecture at Columbia University. In 1947 he began working in his father's shop, starting his own business a few years later, with a showroom on 125 East 57th Street. Its furnishings immediately gained visibility, both because they mix comfort and functionality, and for the eclectic style that distinguishes them, suspended between the ancient and the modern. Among the first works bearing Kagan's signature is the Delegate's Cocktail Lounge at the United Nations in New York, while from the second half of the 50s, the designer began creating projects for film stars and the American jet set: from Marylin Monroe to Frank Sinatra, from Andy Warhol to Gary Cooper, in parallel with the projects realized for the headquarters of large companies, such as Walt Disney and General Electric.
