[1] Her father was a graduate from the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure who spoke seven languages but swore to a life of austerity and seclusion to protest against his own milieu; her mother, Louise Saint-René Taillandier, was a concert pianist who found comfort in the frivolity of "being a great artist without a stage.
[6] Soon after the accident, she broke free from her initial career in music and from the illusion of safety her social environment offered her and decided to discover the world.
She worked for Elle and L'Oeil, a prestigious art magazine where the still-lives she imagined with objects of various styles and from different periods attracted attention.
Personally knowing what it is to "be trapped into the beaten tracks", she was moved by "people whose work is not understood", "impressed by these artists who do not look for anything else but remaining in the depth of their sincerity, their risk", she only wished to help them and establish a connection between them and the rest of the world.
[8] In 1958, Putman collaborated with the retail chain Prisunic as Art Director of the Home Department, where her motto was to "design beautiful things for nothing".
Her wish of making art available to a larger public also became a reality through Prisunic as she organised with her husband editions of lithographs by famous artists sold for only 100 Francs (1,73 €).
[4] In 1968, she distinguished herself in the style agency Mafia until Didier Grumbach spotted her in 1971 and hired her to start a new company which was aimed at developing the textile industry: Créateurs & Industriels.
[7] Her intuition led her to reveal many talented designers such as Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Issey Miyake, Ossie Clark, Claude Montana and Thierry Mugler.
[4] She tried to materialise her intense feeling of emptiness: at the time she lived in a room furnished with only a bed and two lamps "in total austerity, because I no longer knew what I liked."
"[3] From the 1980s, she led more and more interior design projects: hotels such as Le Lac in Japan, Im Wasserturm in Germany and the Sheraton in Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris; stores for Azzedine Alaia, Balenciaga, Bally and Lagerfeld; offices, particularly the one for French Minister of Culture Jack Lang in 1984; and museums like the CAPC, Bordeaux's contemporary art museum.
In 2003, she launched her own line of furniture "Préparation meublée" where the pieces were ironically named "Croqueuse de diamants", "Jeune bûcheron", "Bataille d'oreillers"... ("Gold digger", "Young lumberjack" and "Pillow fight").
Among notable private commissions are the Pagoda House in Tel Aviv,[14] the vast SoHo penthouse for Serge and Tatiana Sorokko,[15] and a cliff-house in Tangier for Bernard-Henri Lévy and Arielle Dombasle, for whom Putman completely restructured the building.
[8][16] In 2007, a new era began as Andrée's daughter Olivia Putman agreed to take over the Art Direction of the Studio, a wish its founder had expressed for a long time.
[2] The following year, Andrée and Olivia present the chair they designed for the American firm Emeco, a line of sunglasses for RAC Paris, a collection of carpets for Toulemonde Bochart, a knife for the Forge de Laguiole, as well as furniture for Fermob and Silvera.
The Studio was also called upon to imagine the scenography for French singer Christophe's concerts at the Olympia and at Versailles, and the Madeleine Vionnet exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
In 2010, Paris' City Hall paid tribute to Andrée Putman by hosting a great exhibition about her life, for which Olivia is curator.