Full-color and black-and-white works by virtually every key artist of the Art Nouveau movement, including Mucha, Seguy, Beardsley, and Verneuil. Includes material from rare books, portfolios, and major periodicals, plus bibliographies and artist biographies.
A volume created to accompany an exhibition considers the popular and influential style of art nouveau showcasing all mediums from Tiffany lampshades to Lalique jewelry.
Rarely has a subject been served by a book of this stature. Five years in the making, it covers all aspects of Art Nouveau in France in 624 authoritative pages and 740 illustrations. Arwas traces the evolution of the movement as it developed, primarily in Nancy and Paris, with the help of carefully chosen illustrations, many never published before. Ranging from the 1900 Paris exhibition to paintings, graphics and posters and such collecting fields as furniture, jewellery, ceramics, book bindings and sculpture, the informative, witty text ranges over architecture, haute couture, and the role of women in Art Nouveau with a particular look at such theatrical icons as Sarah Bernhardt, Loïe Fuller and the Grandes Horizontales. Destined to become the standard book on the subject, both content and design will appeal widely to the connoisseur, the specialist and the collector, as well as to the novice who will be introduced to the magical wonders of the style.
Jewelry was one of the purest and most successful expressions of the Art Nouveau movement. Fresh designs and motifs created intense excitement as organic forms surged with new life, and the female form struggled towards freedom, suggesting a long-hidden eroticism. The artists and goldsmiths who created this jewelry were trained in the nineteenth-century disciplines; their technical mastery allowed them to experiment with new materials and enameling processes to indulge their fantasies. This combination - an atmosphere of ideas for a new art and the unrivaled technical skill of the makers - produced some of the most evocative jewelry of modern times. The book deals with major makers in France, and follows the parallel modern movement that spread through Europe and the United States, acquiring different decorative characteristics, from Great Britain, Germany and Austria, to Belgium, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. Comprehensive biographies of over 300 designers are included, as well as a Guide to Identification, with over 200 makers' marks and signatures.
The result of years of research, this epic volume shows the global reach of the Art Nouveau idiom Modernismo, Jugendstil or Art Nouveau--the different names given to Art Nouveau in different geographical contexts highlight the territorial scope and diversity of the style, but also its common features: it was new, modern, young and groundbreaking. Whether in Austria, Spain, Denmark or Russia, Art Nouveau defined itself as something that opposed tradition and broke with the past. Rejecting a classicizing academic grammar, and reaching deep into the fantastical for inspiration (from the imagined history of the medieval to the Orientalist exotic), artists and architects such as Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, Viollet-le-Duc, William Morris, Otto Wagner, Samuel Bing and the Goncourt brothers created a new style with a holistic vision, embracing architecture, painting, graphic art, interior design, textiles, ceramics and metalwork. Imaginative form was matched by innovative building techniques. The architects of Art Nouveau were some of the first to experiment with building with iron, glass, pottery and prefabricated concrete; their buildings offer instructive models of industrial development and collaborative design. Beautifully illustrated and exhaustively researched, The World Atlas of Art Nouveau Architecture brings together a selection of key Art Nouveau buildings in a truly global survey that includes, for the first time, examples of the style outside of Europe. Exemplars of the form were chosen through a rigorous selection process involving a panel of expert advisors with specialist input from each world region. A general introduction to the style grounds the selection, and short essays explain how Art Nouveau differed in different cities and countries. The World Atlas of Art Nouveau Architecture honors one of the world's first truly global modern art movements.
The Art Nouveau movement is distinguished as the decorative and architectural style that began, in response to the Industrial Revolution. The primary objective of this movement was the creation of a new aesthetic of nature through a return to the study of natural subjects. Designs from this movement are often characterized by plant or floral inspired patterns, and highly-stylized, detailed depictions countering the broad swooping curvatures of a piece in the Art Nouveau style. In order to achieve this, such artists as Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Antoni Gaudí, Jan Toorop, and William Morris favoured innovation in technique and novelty of forms. Art Nouveau attempts to integrate art into all facets of life including materials from furniture, to decorative items in a home, to architecture; building on the movement's philosophy of incorporating art into everyday life. After its triumph at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1900, the trend continued and has inspired many artists since, as well as the Art Déco movement, the successor of Art Nouveau which appeared after World War I. It is fair to say Art Nouveau was at the heart of a "renaissance" in decorative arts.
London is famous for Big Ben; Paris for the Eiffel Tower; Rome for the Colosseum. Barcelona, on the other hand, is not identified by one or two famous buildings as these other European cities, but rather by an entire movement of turn-of-the-century architecture known simply as "Modernisme." Familiar to Americans as art nouveau, its most famous practitioner was the artist and architect Antoni Gaudi. But the city is filled with superb examples of art nouveau in vivid color in "Barcelona Art Nouveau." This book offers a tour of 46 houses, public buildings, and monuments in the art-nouveau style, including brand-new photographs of the work of Gaudi. Visit the famous literary cafe Els Quarte Gats, which was once patronized by Pablo Picasso, who also designed the menu. Lose yourself in the whimsical curves of Casa Josep Batllo, a wonderful example of the combination of artisan tradition and richness that exemplifies art nouveau. These structures, fully restored to pristine condition for the 1992 Olympics, have been rediscovered by both foreigners and Barcelonans alike, and are captured inside and out in this fascinating record of the adventurous, undulating designs of an exciting era.
Buenos Aries boasts a number of impressive buildings in a range of architectural styles. But when Anat Meidan, an art collector with a passion for La Belle Époque, moved to the city, she was delighted to discover how much of the city's Art Nouveau architecture from the early 20th century had survived. The author set about researching these extraordinary buildings as well as the people who designed and built them. Working with Gustavo Sosa Pinilla, Meidan toured the city and documented its architecture, using a few well-placed connections to gain access to the interiors of private homes and buildings usually closed to the general public. In this meticulously researched, richly illustrated book, featuring hundreds of splendid photographs, the reader is invited to share the author's voyage around the city as she narrates a very personal account of her love affair with Buenos Aires.