When was art nouveau started

In Belgium, it was called Style nouille or Style coup de fouet. Although international in scope, Art Nouveau was a short-lived movement whose brief incandescence was a precursor of modernism, which emphasized function over form and the elimination of superfluous ornament. Its influence has been far reaching and is evident in Art Deco furniture designs, whose sleek surfaces are enriched by exotic wood veneers and ornamental inlays.

Dramatic Art Nouveau—inspired graphics became popular in the turbulent social and political milieu of the s, among a new generation challenging conventional taste and ideas. Gontar, Cybele. Greenhalgh, Paul, ed. Art Nouveau, — Exhibition catalogue. Weisberg, Gabriel P. Art Nouveau Bing: Paris Style New York: Abrams, Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, Visiting The Met? Vase Factory of Olivier de Sorra. Vase with peacock feathers Auguste Delaherche. Vase Designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Your shopping basket. Introduction to Art Nouveau. Brussels, capital of Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau Jewelry. Art Nouveau Exhibitions. Reproductions, Replicas and Copies. Art Nouveau Links. Short History : Part Site Map. Art Nouveau interior designers updated some of the more abstract elements of Rococo style, such as flame and shell textures, and also employed highly stylized organic forms, expanding the 'natural' repertoire to include seaweed, grasses, and insects.

Art Nouveau architectural designs made broad use of exposed iron and large, irregular pieces of glass. Art Nouveau Decorative Glass and Jewellery. Jewellery of the Art Nouveau period saw new levels of virtuosity in enameling as well as the introduction of new materials such as moulded glass, horn, and ivory. The growth of interest in Japanese art a fashion known as Japonisme , along with increased respect for Japanese metalworking skills, also stimulated new themes and approaches to ornamentation.

As a result, jewellers stopped seeing themselves as mere craftsmen whose task was to provide settings for precious stones like diamonds, and began seeing themselves as artist-designers.

A new type of Art Nouveau jewellery emerged that depended less on its gemstone content and more on its designwork. The jewellers of Paris and Brussels were at the forefront of the Art Nouveau movement and it was in these cities that it achieved the greatest success. In America, Louis Comfort Tiffany was an adventurous creator of luxury objects, mainly in glass, often utilising the shot-silk glow of metallic iridescence, and inspired by flower and feather. Tiffany's firm was enormously successful and his goods were much imitated.

Art Nouveau Architecture. Art Nouveau architecture was one of the great ubiquitous cultural impulses, appearing virtually throughout Europe and Scandinavia, and in America too.

A very vigorous strain developed in Belgium , where Henri van de Velde pared away the conventions of art and architecture in favour of a rather rigid floral style his house at Uccle, , while Victor Horta seems to have passed the rule-book through a maze of botanical fact the Hotel Tassel , , and the Maison du Peuple , in Brussels.

Horta was widely admired for his readiness to reconsider basic design problems and for the fluency of his adaptations of organic principle. For the Tassel house he opened up the centre into a sort of conservatory space in which the exposed cast iron supports are themselves stylised plants.

And the Maison du Peuple he constructed around a sinuous iron frame, every decorative element of which arose from the containment of stresses. It was said that 'he follows the secret law obeyed by vegetation, which grows in immutable and ever harmonious forms, but he compels himself never to draw a motif, nor to describe a solitary curve which could be seen as a pastiche of natural form'.

In France , Art Nouveau-style nineteenth century architecture had the State's seal of approval when Guimard's designs for the Paris Metro stations were accepted, and above the subways sprouted elaborate arrangements of iron and glass resembling large bean shoots and seed-pods. Hector Guimard had liked Horta's work in Brussels and hoped to extend its radical disruption of expected architectural behaviour.

But the most spectacular results of the decision to rethink design from the ground up, so to speak, are to be found in Spain. Antoni Gaudi conceived for Barcelona a series of architectural extravaganzas, apparently pervaded by thoughts of nature in its less attractive manifestations - the rabbit warren or termite hill, reptilean anatomy, weeds on the rampage. The Palacio Guell has already the ebb and flow, the rhythmic asymmetry of his mature efforts, but is relatively urbane.

The Casa Mila is a riotous assembly of pitted stone and twisting iron, with a ground plan which altogether ignores the right-angle.

And the Church of the Sagrada Familia , uncompleted bemuses the visitor, with its four towers like monster decaying cucumbers: it resembles, on the whole, a vegetable garden in the grip of some ferocious virus and mutating freely. Famous Art Nouveau Artists. The two greatest graphic artists of the Art Nouveau movement were the French lithographer Jules Cheret whose invention of "3-stone chromolithography" made Art Nouveau poster art feasible, and the Czech lithographer and designer Alphonse Mucha whose celebrated posters epitomized the Art Nouveau idiom.

Other famous artists involved in the "new art" included: the French jewellery designer Rene Lalique , the Viennese painter Gustav Klimt , the Polish theatrical designer and stained glass artist Stanislaw Wyspianski , and the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh , leader of the Glasgow School.

While Art Nouveau promoted a more widespread adoption of "beautiful" design, it did not diminish the value of the machine or mass-production as the Arts and Crafts Movement did , but instead took advantage of many technological innovations from the late 19th century. Even so, by World War I, it too succumbed to the more streamlined design processes that were beginning to become available.

Possibly its greatest influence was on 1 20th-century advocates of integrated design, such as the German Bauhaus design school and the Dutch design movement De Stijl ; and 2 Graphic art such as illustration and poster-design. All rights reserved. Art Nouveau c. Introduction Art Nouveau was an innovative international style of modern art that became fashionable from about to the First World War.