Artek was founded in 1935 by four young idealists - Alvar and Aino Aalto, Maire Gullichsen and Nils-Gustav Hahl. The business idea of the company was "to sell furniture and to promote a modern culture of habitation by exhibitions and other educational means." The core of the Artek product range consists of Alvar Aalto’s furniture and lighting pieces but they also continue to work in close collaboration with prominent international architects, designers and artists, such as Eero Aarnio, Shigeru Ban, Naoto Fukasawa, Harri Koskinen, Juha Leiviskä, Enzo Mari and Tobias Rehberger.

Characteristic of Alvar Aalto’s work is the system of standardised individual components that can be pieced together to form a comprehensive collection of furniture. The Aalto collection takes the concept further: products can be easily combined and coordinated with one another, formats like table sizes and heights are flexible, and surfaces and colours complement each other.

The name Artek is a synthesis of 'art' and 'technology' – concepts central to the international modernist movement that came to prominence in the 1920s. It was Walter Gropius, a key proponent of modernism, who coined the motto 'art and technology – a new unity'. Technology was understood to include science and industrial production methods, while the conception of art extended beyond the fine arts to encompass architecture and design. Modernism aimed to achieve a fruitful union of these two spheres. This same aspiration guided the founders of Artek in their naming of the company.

While valuing traditions, Artek has at the same time entered a new era. Combining the ideology of the radical founders and a contemporary and dynamic approach to product development, the company is more art and tech than ever. It stands for clarity, functionality, and poetic simplicity.