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
Henri Gabriel Ibels, Anna Thibaud, 1893
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.
Further reading
- Hans H. Hofstätter, Art Nouveau. Prints, Illustrations and Posters, Ware 1984
- Debora L. Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France: Politics, Psychology and Style, The Hague 1989
- Edwin Becker et al., De oorsprong van L'Art Nouveau: Het Bing imperium, exhib. cat., Amsterdam (Van Gogh Museum) 2004