Virtual tour

Art Nouveau

Josef Hoffmann: fruit basket	Charles Rennie Mackintosh: smoker's cabinet

Art Nouveau, the fin-de-siècle style that preceded Art Deco, fell out of fashion in the years before the First World War. In the increasingly conservative political climate, critics saw it as 'decadent' and over-elaborate. It failed to meet the demand for a modern national style.

In France, veterans of Art Nouveau like Maurice Dufrène and Paul Follot recognized the need to modernize tradition and adapt their designs to machine production. In Austria, the designers of the Wiener Werkstätte retained their handcraft practices. However, they gradually abandoned the taut geometry of the turn-of-the century Secession style for a greater decorative freedom based on national sources.

Elements of Art Nouveau's visual language were adapted in the stylized naturalistic decoration characteristic of the Atelier Martine. The more linear, geometric variant of Art Nouveau, exemplified by the work of Josef Hoffmann and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, directly fed Art Deco designers' search for 'modern' forms and decorative motifs.

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