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Biographies

Daum Freres

French glassmaking business established in 1875 and based in Nancy. Auguste and Jean -Antonin Daum took over the running of the family glassmaking firm in 1887. Inspired by the success of Emile Galle at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, they began producing coloured, etched and moulded glass in the Art Nouveau style. Many designs for the firm were provided by the botanical illustrator Henri Berge. Daum Freres experimented with modern large -scale production techniques, and during the 1890s they collaborated with Louis Majorelle to create a series of lamps and vases. The firm won a Grand Prix at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition, and in 1901 the brothers helped found what became the Ecole de Nancy.

Ecole de Nancy

Decorative arts college in Nancy founded in 1901 by the Alliance Provinciale des Industries d'Art, whose members included Emile Galle, Louis Majorelle and the Daum brothers. The college ensured Nancy of its status as one of the major centres of Art Nouveau. The Musse de l'Ecole de Nancy today houses an important collection of Art Nouveau produced in the area.

Favrile Glass

Hand-blown iridescent glass developed separately by the American designers John La Farge and Louis Comfort Tiffany. The Favrile trademark was registered by Tiffany in 1894 and is thought to be a derivation of an Old English word meaning 'handmade'.

Poster Art

The poster was the most effective advertising tool of the late nineteenth century and brought Art Nouveau to a wide audience. The printing technique of lithography lent itself to the flat, simplified and stylized images of Symbolist painting and Art Nouveau.

Symbolism

Late nineteenth-century European movement in literature and the visual arts that concentrated on symbolic meaning, often through the portrayal of mythical, mystical and esoteric subjects. Although Symbolist artists did not share a coherent style, they were united by their rejection of impressionist preoccupations with colour and light in favour of the importance of the subject. A number of Symbolist painters, including Georges de Feure and Gustave Klimt, also contributed to the Art Nouveau aesthetic when they turned to the decorative arts.

Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs

The official organization devoted to promoting the applied arts in France.

Universal Expositions

International fairs held by governments that were at once entertainment spectacles, showcases for achievements in the arts, industry and science, and exhibitions of artistic and industrial wares from other countries. The first Universal Exposition took place in London in 1851, and the French government held such shows in Paris from 1855.

Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942)

English designer and architect. A central figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement, Ashbee was moved by the ideas of john Ruskin and William Morris to set up the Guild and School of Handicraft in the East End of London in 1888. Ashbee designed much of the Guild's output, some of which represented the finest English Art Nouveau. He exhibited alongside Charles Rennie Mackintosh at the Vienna Secession exhibition in 1900 where his geometric furniture was praised. In 1902 the Guild moved to Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds. It soon fell into decline, though it survived until 1919.

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872-98)

English graphic artist. Beardsley's linear style, rendered in pen and ink, was among the earliest manifestations of mature Art Nouveau. He came to widespread attention through his illustrations for Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur in 1893 and 1894. His 1894 illustrations for Oscar Wilde's play Salome remain his most famous work; in the same year he became art editor of the Yellow Book, the flagship of the Aesthetic Movement in London. By 1896 Beardsley had adopted a more intricate manner to depict the finery and decadence of eighteenth-century France. In 1897 the tuberculosis he had suffered from since childhood worsened, leading to his death at the age of twenty-five.

Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923)

French actress. The most celebrated actress in Paris during the 1890's she commissioned the artist Alphonse Mucha to design posters of her plays in an Art Nouveau style. Among the plays for which he provided posters were Gismonda, Medee and Hamlet. She also commissioned jewellery from Georges Fouquet that was designed by Mucha.

Siegfried Bing (1838-1905)

German -born French art dealer. After training as a ceramics decorator, Bing built up a business selling Japanese art, opening a shop in Paris in the late 1870s. He began editing the periodical Le Japon Artistique in 1888. in 1894 the French government asked him to write a report on the industrial arts in the United States, which was published in 1896. Inspired by the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany and others, Bing began to promote contemporary design. He was aware of the burgeoning Art Nouveau scene in Brussels, and in 1895 he opened a gallery in Paris called L'Art Nouveau, at which he exhibited wonk by international artists and designers, most notably Henry van de Velde. Around 1898 Bing began organizing the production of furniture and objects by designers such as Georges de Feure, Edouard Colonna and Eugene Gaillard. These three created interiors for Bing's pavilion at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition that received huge acclaim. He was never successful on a large scale, however, and in 1904 he sold his gallery.

William H Bradley (1868 -1962)

American graphic artist. Bradley's work drew on the contrasting influences of William Morris and Aubrey Beardsley and his illustrations were among the earliest examples of American Art Nouveau. Trained as a wood engraver in the mid -1880s, he turned to line engraving as his first technique became obsolete. His covers for the Chicago journal Inland Printer in 1894 established him as an exponent of the new style, and he gained widespread acclaim for his posters for another Chicago publication, The Chap Book. In 1895 he returned to his birthplace Massachusetts, where he turned to traditional printing methods, the result being his own periodical Bradley: His Book. He exhibited work at the Paris gallery of Siegfried Bing in 1895, but by 1900 his career was in decline and thereafter he worked largely in commercial printing and type design.

Edouard Colonna (1862 -1948)

German -born American designer. Colonna trained in Brussels and moved to the United States in 1882. After briefly working for Associated Artists, the company of Louis Comfort Tiffany, he moved to Ohio, where he produced a series of designs published as the Essay on Broom Corn. The book reveals Colonna to have been a visionary designer. He returned to Paris in 1898 to work for Siegfried Bing. Along with Georges de Feure and Eugene Gaillard, his designs formed the nucleus of Bing's pavilion at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition.

Walter Crane (1845 -1915)

English painter, illustrator and designer. Prominent in the Arts and Crafts Movement and strongly influenced by the Pre -Raphaelites, Crane was both a fierce critic of Art Nouveau and an early inspiration for many artists who adopted the style. His illustrations for Fiord's Feast (1889) display many of the features of Art Nouveau. Crane exhibited in Belgium in the early 1890's where his work reached a progressive audience, and from 1894 he produced designs for the Kelmscott Press, set up by William Morris. He became principal of the Royal College of Art in London in 1898, and traveled and lectured extensively across Europe and the United States.

August Endell (1871 -1925)

German architect and designer. Endell moved to Munich from Berlin in 1892, where he studied aesthetics, philosophy and psychology, before turning to architecture and art with the encouragement of Herman Obrist. His designs and illustrations, which appeared in journals such as Par, featured abstract natural shapes that show Obrist's influence. Endell is most renowned for the distinctive facade and interiors of the Elvira photography studio in Munich (1897 -8), his first architectural design. As well as being a major figure of German Jugendstil, Endell anticipated abstract art in his writings on art theory in books such as Um die Schonheit (On Beauty) of 1896. He returned to Berlin in 1901 and set up a school in 1904. In the years before World War 1 his work displayed a trend towards greater simplicity.

Georges de Feure (1868 -1928)

French painter and designer. De Feure worked as an actor, a costumier and then as an interior decorator. He also painted watercolours and oils, often of delicate women in a sensuous Symbolist style that illustrates the links between Symbolism and Art Nouveau. De Feure first exhibited furniture in Paris in 1896 and began working for Siegfried Bing in 1899. in 1900 he designed elements of Bing's pavilion for the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition, where his work was praised for its French refinement. De Feure continued to design commercially until the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914.

Fidus (Hugo Hoppener) (1868 -1948)

German graphic artist. Fidus trained in Lubeck and then Munich, where he lived on the commune of the painter W Diefenbach. In 1892 he moved to Berlin and set up another commune. His early illustrations contained dream like Jugendstil abstractions, and his work appeared frequently in Jugend. Fidus held mystical Theosophical beliefs and during the 1890's he became interested in German mythology. His engravings of peasants and warriors evoked an insular worldview at odds with the internationalist outlook promoted by many German artists after 1900. He continued working in an Art Nouveau style long after it was fashionable.

lvan Fomin (1872 -1936)

Russian architect and designer. Suspended from the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg in 1894 for participating in student unrest, Fomin joined the office of Fyodor Shehktel' after working for the architect Lev Kekushev. During his time with Shekhtel' he contributed to the 1902 New Style exhibition. His designs display a monumental simplicity that alludes to traditional Russian styles as well as the modern geometry of Art Nouveau from Vienna and Glasgow. In 1905 Fomin returned to his studies and after 1917 he designed a number of modern classical buildings, most famously the headquarters of the Moscow Soviet in 1928.

Georges Fouquet (1862 -1957)

French jeweller. The son of a goldsmith, Fouquet took over the family firm in 1895 and soon adopted the Art Nouveau style. In 1900 he produced jewellery designed by Alphonse Mucha and won a gold medal at the Paris Universal Exposition. Mucha also created the interiors of Fouquet's shop in 1901 Although initially inspired by nature and Japanese art, he went on to make more geometric pieces with Egyptian motifs, resulting in a revival of his fortunes in the 1920s with the advent of Art Deco.

Loie Fuller (1862 -1928)

American dancer and muse. By the age of fifteen Fuller was touring America with a theatrical company. She moved to London in 1889 and, following limited success as an actress, began to develop her expressive dances. After briefly returning to New York, Fuller went to Paris in 1892, where she danced at the Folies -Bergere. Her performances to the music of Claude Debussy and Fryderyk Chopin involved swirling fabrics, coloured lights and mirrored stage sets. She was celebrated by Symbolist writers and became an icon of Art Nouveau as her dances revolved around the themes of femininity and metamorphosis. During the 1890's a plethora of Art Nouveau bronze sculptures and lamps were made of her.

Eugene Gaillard (1862 -1933)

French designer and architect. Gaillard rejected a career in law to take up interior design and decoration. Siegfried Bing employed him alongside Georges de Feure and Edouard Colonna to create interiors for his pavilion at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition. The abstract natural forms of his furniture reflected a mistrust of historicism and he became a vocal advocate of modern design. Around 1903 he left Bing's atelier and set up his own firm. In 1906 he published A Propos du Mobilier (On Furniture).

Emile Galle (1846 -1904)

French glassmaker, ceramicist and furniture designer. Galle studied botany and mineralogy in Germany before taking over the family glassmaking firm in Nancy in 1874. His work demonstrates his interests in botany, Symbolism and Japanese art. He first exhibited furniture at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, where his style displayed a debt to French traditions. GaIIe was an astute businessman and his workforce expanded rapidly in the 1890's His unrivalled stature in the French decorative arts was confirmed in 1900 when he was awarded the Legion d'honneur. In 1901 he helped set up the Ecole de Nancy. After his death, the firm continued until the 1930s.

Akseli Gallen -Kallela (1865 -1931)

Finnish painter and designer. Trained in Helsinki and Paris, Gallen -Kallela painted National Romantic landscapes, before adopting a Symbolist style in the 1890's He was intrigued by traditional art and life in rural Karelia, and turned his artistic attention to the Finnish epic the Kalevala. Gallen -Kallela was a defining figure of Finnish Art Nouveau. His country house 'Kalela' combined traditional and modern ideas, as did his designs for textiles and stained glass. Murals for the Finnish pavilion at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition brought his work to an international audience. During the 1910s and 1920s he had close ties with the German Expressionists, but he later returned to the Kalevala embarking on a plan to fully illustrate the story.

Antoni Gaudi i Cornet (1857 -1926)

Catalan architect. Gaudi was a devout Catholic whose faith was an integral part of his creative vision. He trained in Barcelona and became the most famous architect of the Modernista movement, drawing on gothic and Moorish traditions to create a unique plastic-organic style. Through his involvement in conservative Catholic politics he gained commissions from the industrialist Eusebio Guell and the Catholic Church. In 1883 he was appointed Director of Works for the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, which had been begun by the architect Francisco de Paula Villary Lozano. Gaudi set about redesigning the building and he continued working on it until his death.

Hector Guimard (1867 -1942)

French architect and designer. Guimard studied at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs and the Ecole des Beaux -Arts in Paris. He then embarked on an architectural career that produced some of the most innovative buildings of Art Nouveau. The influence of Eugene -Emmanuel Viollet -le -Duc was apparent in his use of ironwork, and his designs for the new Paris Metro stations of 1900 combined daring linear forms with industrial methods of construction. Guimard also designed a number of houses during this period, as well as a range of furniture and objects that reflected the contrast between his abstract flowing style and the more figurative Art Nouveau of Nancy. In later years Guimard was uncomfortable with Modernism. He left France for the United States in 1939.

Josef Hoffmann (1870 -1956)

Austrian architect and designer. Hoffmann studied under Otto Wagner in Vienna, and in 1896 began working in his office. He joined the Secession in 1897 and became a professor at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna in 1899. He was initially attracted to the sweeping decoration of Jugendstil, however, his style soon became more geometric. In 1903 Hoffmann set up the Wiener Werkstatte, to which he contributed a vast range of furniture, metalwork, glass, ceramics and textile designs. He also provided the backbone of its architectural practice. His best -known buildings were the Purkersdorf Sanatorium outside Vienna (1904 -6) and the Palais Stoclet in Brussels (1905 -11) one of the last great Art Nouveau Gesamtkunstwerk.

Victor Horta (1861 -1947)

Belgian architect. After studying in Ghent and Brussels, Horta joined the office of the architect Alphonse Balat. In 1890 he set up his own firm, and in 1893 designed what is widely regarded as the first architectural expression of mature Art Nouveau, Tassel house in Brussels. The innovative use of exposed ironwork and open-plan space characterised Horta's style. A series of houses in Brussels consolidated his reputation, perhaps the most spectacular being a house for Baron van Eetvelde (1895 -7). Like many artists in Brussels, Horta had socialist leanings and between 1896 and 1899 he built the Maison du Peuple, a complex of shops, Offices and halls for the Belgian Worker's Party. His Brussels department store A L'Innovation (1901) demonstrated the suitability of Art Nouveau for retail buildings. His work after 1903 was less adventurous and made use 0f classical forms.

Gustav Klimt (1862 -1918)

Austrian painter and designer. Klimt opened a studio in 1883 after training at the School of Arts and Crafts in Vienna. His early paintings were academic in style, but he became increasingly influenced by Symbolism, provoking bitter criticisms from Vienna's artistic establishment. Klimt was one of the founders of the Secession in 1897, becoming the group's first president; he also set up the journal Ver Sacrum. The Beethouen Frieze, painted in 1902 to decorate the Secession Building, signalled an even more stylised aesthetic. Klimt remained a prominent figure in the Secession until he resigned in 1905. He was associated with the Wiener Werkstatte, his most notable contribution being his friezes for the Palais Stoclet in Brussels designed by Josef Hoffmann in 1905-11.

Rene Lalique (1860 -1945)

French ieweller. Lalique trained in Paris and London, and in 1885 took over the workshop of the Parisian jeweller Jules d'Estape. He embarked on a career that revolutionized jewellery design, rejecting traditional materials such as diamonds in favour of vividly coloured gemstones. Motifs such as nymphs and flowers were typical of Lalique's Art Nouveau work, and his clients included the actress Sarah Bernhardt. In 1898 he began glassmaking, which gradually replaced jewellery as the focus of his talent. His glassware came to embody the flamboyant 1920s Art Deco style.

Arthur Lasenby Liberty (1843 -1935)

English merchant. In 1875 Liberty opened his first shop, Fast India House, on Regent Street in London. His imported Oriental wares helped define the fashionable Aesthetic taste in London. Liberty's also stocked Arts and Crafts goods. In 1890 a Paris branch of his shop opened. The company both sold and produced English Art Nouveau objects, most notably the 'Cymric' and 'Tudric' ranges by designers including Archibald Knox. Liberty also introduced continental Art Nouveau to London shoppers, stocking such objects as chairs by Richard Riemerschmid and ceramics by the Hungarian firm Zsolnay.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868 -1928)
Margaret MacDonald (1865 -1933)

Mackintosh was a Scottish architect, designer and painter who worked closely with his wife, the painter and designer Margaret MacDonald, whom he met at the Glasgow School of Art He was taken on by the architects Honeyman and Keppie in 1888, where he met the artist Herbert MacNair. Mackintosh developed an individual style with symbolist overtones. In 1894 he exhibited with MacNair , MacDonald an her sister Frances for the first time. Mackintosh is best remembered today for his post -1895 work, beginning with the Glasgow School of Art (begun 1896) and followed by tea rooms for Catherine Cranston. Mackintosh and MacDonald also received decorative commissions, the most celebrated being the Hill House (1902 -4) in Helensburgh. His success declined in the years after 1905.

Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo (1851 -1942)

English architect and designer. Mackmurdo studied at oxford and was a disciple of John Ruskin. He was a leading figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement, yet, like Waiter Crane, his work also contained the seeds of Art Nouveau. His designs for wallpaper and textiles, together with his chairs for the Century Guild, display the flowing linear style of Art Nouveau. The Century Guild, of which he was a founding member, ceased its activities in 1892, and he gradually turned towards classical architecture.

Louis Majorelle (1859 -1926)

French designer. Majorelle took over his family's cabinet -making business in Nancy in 1879, where he continued the firm's production of Neo -Rococo furniture. Influenced by Emile Galle he developed a style characterized by heavy abstracted organic carving embellished with gilt -bronze mounts. in the 1890s he worked with Daum Freres to produce lamps and vases. His furniture was well received at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition, and the years around this time represented the height of his achievement. He turned to mechanised production after 1908, but his factory was destroyed in World War 1.

Julius Meier -Graefe (1867 -1935)

German art critic and dealer. After studying engineering in Munich, Zurich and Liege, Meier -Graefe went to Berlin in 1890 He became involved in the art scene, and in 1894 he co -founded the journal Pan. in 1895 he moved to Paris, where he started another periodical, Dekorative Kunst in 1897. Committed to the design reform aspects of Art Nouveau as well as its aesthetic, he resolved to put his ideas into practice when, in 1899, he set up La Maison Moderne. The aim of this shop was to promote modern design to a broad public. Though initially successful, it folded in 1904 as Art Nouveau became unfashionable.

William Morris (1834 -96)

English designer, writer and socialist. Trained as an architect, Morris mixed in Pre -Raphaelite circles before founding his own firm in 1861, which became Morris & Co in 1875. Through his ideas on utility and beauty in design, coupled with his socialist principles, he became the defining figure of the Arts and Crafts Movement. He drew on medieval motifs and designed furniture, stained glass, wallpaper and fabrics. His use of stylised flora] and organic forms in his patterns was influential in the evolution of Art Nouveau, and his ideas on the primacy of craftsmanship also had resonance for many Art Nouveau artists. However, his deep distrust of modernity, encapsulated in his novel News from Nowhere (1890) seemed retrograde to those who sought to exploit new materials and modern methods of production

Hermann Obrist (1862-1927)

Swiss-German designer. Perhaps the pivotal figure in the development of Jugendstil in Munich, Obrist encountered the Arts and Crafts Movement when travelling in Britain in 1887, where he trained as a ceramicist. His work gained a gold medal at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris. Following his move to Munich in 1894, Obrist came to prominence in 1896 with an exhibition of thirty -five embroideries that exemplified his abstract approach to nature in art. A founder of the Munich Vereinigte Werkstatten fur Kunst im Handwork in 1897, he was also a prolific writer and teacher. His ideas about abstraction influenced the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky.

Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867 -1908)

Like Josef Hoffmann Olbrich worked in the office of Otto Wagner in Vienna from 1894, becoming chief assistant in 1896. in 1897 he was involved in founding the Secession, and his design for the Secession Building, begun 1898, announced the importance of the classicism in Viennese fin -de -siecle architecture. in 1899 he was invited to join the artists' colony at Darmstadt, where he designed a series of houses, studios and galleries. Olbrich helped set up the Deutsche Werkbund in Munich in 1907.

Bernhard Pankok (1872 -1943)

German painter, architect and designer. Pankok trained as a painter in Munster and moved to Munich in 1892. After some time as a portraitist, he began contributing to Jugend and Pan. He turned to furniture design in 1897, and in the same year he helped set up the Vereinigte Werkstatten fur Kunst im Handwerk. In 1899 he created adventurous Jugendstil furniture for the villa of Hermann Obrist. Pankok exhibited at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition, and in 1901 he moved to Stuttgart, where he lectured and continued his design and architectural career.

Richard Riemerschmid (1868 -1957)

German architect and designer. Though he trained as a painter at the Munich Academy, Riemerschmid was best known for his furniture designs, which he turned to in 1895 after being inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement. I n 1897 he co -founded the Vereinigte Werkstatte fur Kunst im Handiwork. He displayed an interior scheme, the 'Room for an Art Lover', at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition, and in 1901 he designed one of Munich's most celebrated fin -de -siecle buildings, the Schauspielhaus. In 1903 he joined the Dresden Werkstatte. His designs betrayed a simplicity that set them apart from more elaborate Art Nouveau, and his series of Machinenmobel ('machine -made furniture'), first exhibited in 1906, showed his engagement with modern manufacturing. In 1907 he helped found the Deutsche Werkbund.

Fyodor Shektel' (1859 -1926)

Russian architect and designer. After studying in Moscow, Shekhtel' worked for the architect A Kaminsky, a member of the Mir Iskusstva artists' group.'His early work combined traditionaI styles with Art Nouveau to create a specifically Russian variant. Between 1900 and 1902 he built mansions in Moscow, and in 1901 designed the Russian pavilions at the Glasgow International exhibition. His office was behind the 1902 New Style exhibition in Moscow, which showcased Western and Russian designers.

Gustave Serrurier-Bovy (1858 -1910)

Belgian architect and designer. Serrurier trained in Liege in the 1870s, where he encountered the teachings of John Ruskin, William Morris and Eugene -Ernmanuel Viollet -le -Duc. In 1884 he set up a company in Liege selling imported wares and his own furniture. Serrurier exhibited at La Libre Esthetique in 1894 and 1895, and in 1897 he contributed to the Congo pavilion at the Brussels Universal Exposition. He opened a branch of his business in Paris in the same year. The Pavilion Bleu, a restaurant built for the Paris Universal Exposition 0f 1900, was one of the few examples of unrestrained Art Nouveau architecture. After visiting Darmstadt in 1901 he adopted more simplified forms.

Louis Henry Sullivan (1856 -1924)

American architect. Sullivan studied in Boston and worked for Frank Furness in Philadelphia, before joining the engineer Dankmar Adler in 1880, where he became a partner in 1883. In the late 1880s they built steel -framed skyscrapers that combined Adler's engineering skills with Sullivan's decorative genius. His stylised forms derived from the Gothic Revival, yet they offered a radical new style for modern buildings and constituted a uniquely American Art Nouveau. Sullivan's retrospective explanation of his ideas, the System of Architectural Ornament (1924), reveals an element of mysticism.

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848 -1933)

American designer. Son of the silversmith Charles Lewis Tiffany, he trained as a painter in the 1860s with the artist Samuel Coleman. Tiffany began working with glass in 1873. In 1879 he established Associated Artists, designing opulent interiors for wealthy East Coast families. He set up Tiffany Glass and Decorating Co (later Tiffany Studios) in 1892, and in 1894 registered his Favrile glass patent. Tiffany had close ties with European Art Nouveau: he made a series of windows designed by leading French artists in 1895, and his lamps and glassware appeared at the Paris gallery of Siegfried Bing three years later. His signature leaded glass lamps were first shown in 1899. In 1902 he became design director of the family silver firm Tiffany & Co. He turned to jewellery around 1904.

Henri Toulouse -Lautrec (1864 -1901)

French painter and graphic artist. Toulouse -Lautrec began painting in Paris in the 1880s and studied under the Symbolist Emile Bernard, exhibiting at the Salon des Independants from 1889. in 1891 he designed his first posters, for which he received widespread acclaim. His posters brought his stylised representations of decadent Parisian life to a broad public.

Henry van de Velde (1863 -1957)

Belgian architect, designer and painter. After studying painting in Antwerp and Paris, Van de Velde turned to the decorative arts in the early 1890s inspired by William Morris. He was opposed to historicism and created designs based on flowing, abstract forms. in 1895 he built and decorated a house in Brussels, Bloemenwerf, for himself and his wife. He met Siegfried Bing and designed rooms for his gallery in Paris. Following an exhibition of Bing's rooms in Dresden in 1897, and partly as a result of the dealer's increasing preference for French styles, Van de Velde moved to Germany. He received commissions in Berlin and met his patron Karl Ernst Osthaus in 1900. He helped found the Deutsche Werkbund in 1907, but clashed with the critic Hermann Muthesius because Van de Velde saw standardisation as a threat to the creativity of the individual artist.

Eugene -Emnanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814 -79)

French architect and writer. The self -taught architect Viollet -le -Duc was the most famous proponent of the Gothic Revival in France. He was best known for restorations at Pierrefonds and Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, but despite his reverence for the Gothic, he was also a critic of eclectic historicism. His lectures Entretiens sur L'architecture (Treatises on Architecture; 1863 -72) advocated the adventurous use of iron and glass. Art Nouveau architects including Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, Antoni Gaudi and Louis Sullivan all cited Viollet as an influence.

Charles Francis Annesley Voysey (1857 -1941)

English architect and designer. After working for the Gothic Revival architect D Seddon, Voysey began his own firm in 1882. He was a central figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement, joining the Art Workers Guild in 1884 and showing at the Arts and Crafts exhibitions in London from 1893. Chiefly remembered for his simple houses, he also designed patterns and furniture during the 1880s that displayed a lyricism which anticipated Art Nouveau.

Otto Wagner (1841 -1918)

Austrian architect. Wagner encountered the work of Karl Friedrich Schinkel while studying in Berlin, and his work in Vienna illustrates the importance of classicism to Viennese Art Nouveau. In 1894 he was commissioned to design stations for the city, and in 1898 his two apartment blocks at 38 and 40 Linke Wienzeile were among the earliest examples of Jugendstil architecture in Vienna. Wagner joined the Secession in 1899, allying himself with the younger radical artists. His Post Office Savings Bank (begun 1903) exemplifies his modern classicism.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 -1959)

American architect and designer. Between 1888 and 1893 he worked in Chicago for Louis Sullivan, and the influence of Sullivan's organic forms is apparent in his designs and writings. Wright's early work displays close parallels with the development of Art Nouveau in Europe. From 1901 to 1913 he built a series of 'prairie houses' that combine low geometric forms and spaces with stylised ornament, For Wright, natural setting was crucial to his designs.


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