Art nouveau

Art nouveau
Recognizable by its curves and references to nature, art nouveau was established from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. The arabesques contrast with previous artistic trends. In addition to Hector Guimard's famous Parisian subway entrance, many artists have distinguished themselves in this colourful style. Animals, flowers and trees are represented. Artists have used various materials : glass, ironwork, wood, or even mosaics.
Exhibition Catalogues

Toulouse-Lautrec - Exhibition catalogue

EK197401
  • € 45
Written in French.

The other dimension of the work that must be linked to his learning is the desire to represent time, and soon to deploy its duration rather than to freeze its movement. Whether it was Princeteau, his master in equestrian painting, Cormon, an energetic painter par excellence, or Degas, who pushed him to track the dynamics beyond dance, Lautrec never stopped reformulating the space-time of the image. The artist has managed to reconcile the subjective fragmentation of the image with the desire to raise modern life to new myths.

As his correspondence attests, Manet, Degas and Forain allowed him, as early as the mid-1880s, to transform his powerful naturalism into a more incisive and caustic style. Real continuity can be observed on both sides of his short career. One of them is the narrative component from which Lautrec disposes much less than one might think. She was particularly active on the eve of death, around 1900, when her vocation as a history painter took a desperate turn.

Between painting, literature and new media, the exhibition finds its way as close as possible to this involuntary midwife of the 20th century.

Written in French.
352 pages / 350 illustrations

Rmn-Grand Palais Publishing
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Did you know ?
Art nouveau is also called "noodle style", because of the curves that characterize it.
" There are no straight lines or sharp angles in nature. Therefore, buildings should not have any straight lines or sharp corners. " Antoni Gaudi
Alphonse Mucha

Alphonse Mucha

12 September 2018 30 January 2019 Exhibition has ended
Born in 1860 in the small town of Ivančice, Alphonse Mucha became famous in 1895 in Paris, with Gismonda, his first poster for Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), the greatest actress of the time. As a poster artist, Mucha developed a very personal style, the "Mucha style", characterised by sinuous forms mixing young women, floral motifs and ornamental lines, as well as a subtle range of pastel shades. This style would soon embody the movement emerging at the time in the decorative arts - Art Nouveau. While he is famous for his posters, Mucha was a versatile artist: painter, sculptor, photographer, decorator and also a valued teacher. During his first trip to the United States in 1904, he was called "the greatest decorative artist in the world". But his political and humanist beliefs led him to gradually give up this decorative style and to undertake cycles of history painting, sometimes in very large format, in a militant and idealistic spirit. Thus, around 1900-1910, he changed and supported resolutely figurative and epic paintings, detached from all the European avant-garde artists. His late works bear witness to his dream of unity among all Slav peoples, notably The Slavic Epic (1912-1926), a cycle composed of twenty monumental paintings. This exhibition traces the career of Mucha and draws the portrait of a complex artist, driven by a social and philosophical vision.
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