rt Nouveau, or “New Art” was the leading international decorative art movement from it’s origins in 1890’s Paris through World War 1. Known as Jugenstil (“Young Style”) in Germany, and Stile Liberty in Italy, Art Nouveau was an organic, flowing style which took it’s inspiration from nature and from artistic sources such Byzantine art, Japanese woodblocks, the Arts and Crafts movement and Pre-Raphaelite painting. Another source was the Symbolist movement, which emphasised the spiritual and sensual as opposed to the scientific. Art Nouveau’s freedom from historical imitation and its use of innovation marks it as an early step in modernist design. Its stylistic influence was all-encompassing, from architecture and furniture to graphics and consumer items.

The flowery, ornate style was born almost overnight in 1894 when Alphonse Mucha, a Czech artist working in Paris, was pressed to produce a poster for Sarah Bernhardt, the brilliant actress who had taken Paris by storm. His creation was the first masterpiece of Art Nouveau poster design.

The poster craze of the 1890’s, or Belle Epoque, witnessed the spread of poster art to all of Europe and America and with it went the Art Nouveau style. Prominent artists influenced by it included Steinlen and de Feure in France, Livemont in Belgium, Hohenstein and Metlicovitz in Italy, Bradley and Penfield in America, Toorop and van Caspel in Holland, Beardsley and the Beggarstaff Brothers in England, and Klimpt and Moser in Austria.

The term Art Nouveau is often used more broadly to include other related styles of the Belle Epoque, from the Rococo Revival style of Cheret and the Post-Impressionism of Toulouse-Lautrec to the Arts and Crafts style of Roland Hols and the Amsterdam School.

Today this magnificent period is captured in our gallery in poster form in beautiful reproductions that we all may enjoy today, and in the future.

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