Edmond Aman-Jean, Beneath the Flowers (Sous les fleurs) from the album Album L'Estampe moderne (Album IX), 1898

Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau flourished throughout Europe in the period around 1900. Rather than limiting themselves to easel paintings, artists began to work as craftsmen, using their talent to design decorative artworks such as illustrations, posters, furniture, fans and crockery.

These served as an alternative to the run-of-the-mill mass-produced goods and flashy trinkets that dominated the market. By designing even the most insignificant household items like works of art, they created an aesthetic living environment.

Elegant lines from nature

The most characteristic feature of Art Nouveau printmaking is its use of lines. Artists frequently drew their arabesques from graceful elements in nature — a swan’s neck, for instance, or a flowering vine. Their prints were filled with decorative female figures in elegant, serene poses.

Artists created a modern style by making their motifs abstract and creating a harmony of ornaments and patterns. This also enabled them to create a fantasy world, far removed from visible reality.

Eugène Grasset, Salon des Cent, 1894 — Eugène Grasset, *Salon des Cent*, 1894

Henri Gabriel Ibels, Anna Thibaud, 1893 — Henri Gabriel Ibels, *Anna Thibaud*, 1893

Charles-Louis-M. Houdard, Frogs (Grenouilles), 1894 — Charles-Louis-M. Houdard, *Frogs (Grenouilles)*, 1894

Gallery L’Art Nouveau

This decorative movement took its name from the opening of the gallery L’Art Nouveau by the visionary dealer Siegfried Bing in 1895.

Bing’s gallery carefully combined paintings, prints, furniture and everyday objects to create aesthetic ensembles — he presented ‘the new art’ as a total experience.

Art Nouveau

Elegant lines from nature

Gallery L’Art Nouveau

Further reading