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The powerful environment created by the Industrial Revolution led to ideas and innovations that resulted in a new art form that was to revolutionise architecture, interior design, furniture and all forms of art. This was the Art Nouveau movement that reached its peak from 1890 until 1914.
The movement started in 1861 in England where William Morris and other artists created the Arts and Crafts Movement. They wanted an art for everyone combining beauty and utility. Exhibitions and various publications took up their cause to promote the changes.
The name Art Nouveau became established in Paris with the opening in 1895 of an art gallery "La Maison de l'Art Nouveau" by Samuel Bing, a collector of Japanese art. Wider attention was drawn to Art Nouveau during the World Exhibition held in Paris in 1900 and by the opening of its subway "le Metropolitain", the entrances of which were designed in the style by a French architect Hector Guimard. It probably reached its greatest heights at the Turin Exposition in 1902.
Many artists, architects and designers in all forms of decorative and visual arts embraced the "art of modern life". In 1883, Arthur Mackmurdo published a book of designs in the style of the new movement for the city churches of Sir Christopher Wren. In 1893, a Belgian architect Victor Horta began to plan the first important house to be built in the Art Nouveau Style in Brussels - La Maison Tassel. Between 1892 and 1897, painters in France and Belgium such as Odilon Redon and Ferdinand Knopf explored mystical themes in the Art Nouveau style. Artists and designers such as the illustrator Alfons Mucha, glassware designer Emile Gallé, and perfume bottles designer René Lalique were deeply influenced. At the beginning of the new century, there was expansion of Art Nouveau throughout Western Europe, particularly in Brussels and in provincial cities such as Nancy, Glasgow and Barcelona. Art Nouveau reached the northern United States early in the new century promoted by Louis Comfort Tiffany in the decorative field and Louis Sullivan in architecture, and later by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Art Nouveau was defined by richly ornamental symbolic or dreamlike flowing lines and shades of light using nature and life for inspiration. Frequently these included sensuous feminine figures or twisting flowers and leaves, as well as having fine lines and geometric shapes. The style involved all forms of the visual and decorative arts as well as literature and music. Painters, illustrators, jewellery and glassware designers explored new themes. Glass making was an area in which the style found tremendous expression, for example with the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany in New York and Émile Gallé and the Daum brothers in Nancy. Jewellery of the Art Nouveau period used nature as the inspiration, complemented by fine enamelling and introduction of new materials such as opals and semi-precious stones. René Lalique used nature in jewellery to include aspects of nature such as insects inspired by his encounter with Japanese art.
As an art movement, it had affinities with the Pre-Raphaelites and the Symbolism movement, and artists like Aubrey Beardsley, Alfons Mucha, Edward Burne-Jones, Gustav Klimt, and Jan Toorop could be classed in more than one of these styles. Unlike Symbolist painting, however, Art Nouveau has a distinctive visual look; and unlike the Pre-Raphaelites, Art Nouveau artists quickly used new materials and techniques to achieve pure design. Japanese wood-block prints with their curved lines and flat patterned surfaces also inspired Art Nouveau. For sculpture the principle materials employed were glass and wrought iron.
The onset of the First World War in 1914 marked the end of Art Nouveau in Europe. The elegance, sensuality and flamboyance of Art Nouveau was substituted by more rational styles such as Art Deco. Art Nouveau had made use of many technological innovations of the late 19th century particularly the use of exposed iron and large irregularly-shaped pieces of glass in architecture but this was expensive to produce. By the start of the First World War the highly stylized nature of Art Nouveau design began to be dropped in favor of more streamlined, simple modernism that was cheaper and more faithful to the a plain industrial style.
Noted Art Nouveau artists
Architecture
• Émile André (1871-1933)
• Georges Biet (1868-1955)
• Paul Charbonnier (1865-1953)
• Raimondo Tommaso D'Aronco (1857-1932)
• Mikhail Eisenstein (1867 - 1921),
• August Endel (1871-1925)
• Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926)
• Victor Horta (1861-1947)
• Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956)
• Hector Guimard (1867-1942)
• Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928)
• Louis Sullivan (1856-1924)
• Eugène Vallin (1856-1922)
• Fyodor Shekhtel (1859-1926)
• Henry Van de Velde (1863-1957)
• Otto Wagner (1841-1918)
• Lucien Weissenburger (1860-1929)
• Marian Peretiatkovich (1872-1916)
Drawing, Graphics
• Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898)
• Gaston Gerard (1878-1969)
• Konstantin Korovin (1861-1939)
• Alfons Mucha (1860-1939)
• Edvard Munch (1863-1944)
• Valentin Serov (1865-1911)
Konstantin Somov (1869-1939)
• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)
• Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin (1876-1942)
• Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)
• Léon Bakst (1866-1924)
Furniture
• Carlo Bugatti (1856-1940)
• Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926)
• Eugène Gaillard (1862-1933)
• Louis Majorelle (1859-1926)
• Henry van de Velde (1863-1957)
Glassware and Stained glass
• Daum brothers -- Auguste Daum (1853-1909) and Antonin Daum (1864-1930)
• Émile Gallé (1846-1904)
• Jacques Gruber (1870-1936)
• René Lalique (1860-1945)
• Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933)
• Stanisław Wyspiański (1869-1907)
Other decorative arts
• Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942)
• William Bradley (1868-1962)
• Jules Brunfaut (1852-1942)
• Auguste Delaherche (1857-1940)
• Georges de Feure (1868-1928)
• Hermann Obrist (1863-1927)
• Philippe Wolfers (1858-1929)
Murals and mosaics
• Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910)
• Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)
• Antoni Gaudi and Alfons Mucha
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