The document provides an overview of the Art Nouveau movement in various countries across Europe from the late 19th to early 20th century. It began as a reaction against academic styles and sought to integrate all art forms with architecture at its center. Key characteristics included dynamic curved lines inspired by nature. The style was expressed differently in places like Belgium with floral curves, and Vienna which featured simplified geometric designs. Major figures and works discussed include Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and Antoni Gaudi.

1. MODERNISM Revision

2. Introduction Art Nouveau is the French/Belgian name of an art movement in reaction to the academical schools at the end of the XIXth century (1894-1914). This movement was represented in Europe and also in the United States. It had often several names in each country: in Germany "Jugendstil", in Italy: "Stile Liberty", "Art Nouveau" in France, Modernism in Spain, "Nieuwe Kunst" in the Netherlands or "Sezessionstil" in Austria).

3. Introduction Artists wanted to erase the distinction between major and minor arts. They aimed at unifying all arts, centred it around man and his life. Architecture was the central art on which every skill is naturally integrated. Architecture is seen as a total art every detail, object of/in the building is related to the whole. This decorative style took its inspiration into nature and women.

4. Roots and influences

5. Materials It used all the new materials at hand such as: Cast iron: It is merely used as columns in the building field Steel: This material is the symbol of the first industrial revolution Ceramics: It was used due to several factors: Technical: It is waterproof, fireproof and pollution proof. Sanitary: It is easily washable. Economic: It is more profitable longer lasting wear and lower installation cost. Aesthetic Glass: There are several factors for its use: Functional and Sanitary: making luminous living areas. Decoration: use of stain glasses. Integration: glass make Reinforced concrete: Cheaper and strong enough

6. Technical advances These advances made possible the change in building conception: Lift elevators: With the arrival of lifts, the masters floor will be the last floor because air is much more respirable there and it maximizes the sun enlightment. Electrical light: It influenced in the evolution of lamps design Central heating: Houses became more comfortable.

7. Character Dynamic, undulating, and flowing, with curved 'whiplash' lines of syncopated rhythm, characterized much of Art Nouveau. Another feature is the use of hyperbolas and parabolas in windows, arches, and doors. Conventional moldings seem to spring to life and 'grow' into plant-derived forms. Like most design styles, Art Nouveau sought to harmonize its forms. The text above the Paris Metro entrance follows the qualities of the rest of the iron work in the structure

8. Character As an art movement it has affinities with the Pre-Raphaelites and the Symbolism movement. Unlike Symbolist painting, however, Art Nouveau has a distinctive visual look; and unlike the backward-looking Arts and Crafts Movement, Art Nouveau artists quickly used new materials, machined surfaces, and abstraction in the service of pure design. Art Nouveau in architecture and interior design eschewed the eclectic revival styles of the Victorian era. Though Art Nouveau designers selected and 'modernized' some of the more abstract elements of Rococo style, such as flame and shell textures, they also advocated the use of highly stylized organic forms as a source of inspiration, expanding the 'natural' repertoire to embrace seaweed, grasses and insects.

9. Character Japanese wood-block prints, with their curved lines, patterned surfaces, contrasting voids, and flatness of visual plane, also inspired Art Nouveau. Some line and curve patterns became graphic clichés that were later found in works of artists from all parts of the world. Art Nouveau did not negate the machine as the Arts and Crafts Movement did, but used it to its advantage. For sculpture, the principal materials employed were glass and wrought iron, leading to sculptural qualities even in architecture. Art Nouveau is considered a 'total' style, meaning that it encompasses a hierarchy of scales in design — architecture; interior design; decorative arts including jewelry, furniture, textiles, household silver and other utensils, and lighting; and the range of visual arts.

10. Origin Among the first manifestations of the style are the works of the Belgian Victor Horta, who applied the new conceptions in his Tassel House (1892). Here he developed a new concept of architecture based on the rational use of iron but without renouncing to treat it in an expressive and decorative way with cures and lineal rhythms very refined that gave to the columns, girders and handrails flower shape.

11. Expansion From Belgium, and thanks to the fast diffusion of printed press, it expanded all over Europe, finding in Catalonia one of the most important regions due to the enthusiastic baking of industrial bourgeoisie. There appeared one of the most important and original architects of the movement, Gaudí (1852-1926), whose architecture, highly plastic, almost sculptural, looks to be made of natural forms. Gaudi also realised the decoration of the buildings, trying to keep coherence between exterior and interior. Other architects of the period in Spain are Domènec I Montaner and Puig I Cadafalch. In Barcelona the Modernism reached to all the cultural aspects, with painters such as Rusiñol, Ramón Casas, Nonell.

12. Expansion The new style affected basically architecture and decorative arts, but it also influenced on all the others. Its theory expanded with the illustrated magazines, speeches, exhibitions that were useful to expand the knowledge of technical advances. In this way there were established the basis of the style to which each country added its own particularities: in Belgium, France and Spain curves and flowers are essential elements of the style, in Britain, Scotland or Germany it is geometrical. In all the cases it was a reaction against the eclecticism and its inspiration was nature and symbolist painting.

13. Characteristics In architecture: they looked for flexibility of the line and sinuosity with decorative finality; they used coloured materials and moulding stone; bars, balconies and supports were made in forged iron. The new materials offered to the architect complete creative freedom. They assumed not only the structural and building process but also the decorative and furnishing, making of them real designers.

14. Characteristics Interiors were organised as a surface of sinuous and sensual lines, with a naturalistic tendency. There were harmonic wholes created with freedom and fantasy. They looked for the pleasure of the integration of beauty and welfare. Nature was translated to the interior, making it flexible, instable and light.

15. Characteristics Sinuous lines were elongated on walls and floors, in a kind of vegetal metaphor. The work is organic, extracted from nature; the use of flower elements with decorative purpose created an smart atmosphere. The main centres of production were France, Belgium, Germany and Austria. Among the authors we can mention Victor Horta, the pioneer, Van de Velde and Otto Wagner in Wien.

16. United Kingdom There were several styles that were influential in the style: Arts & Crafts Garden city movement Japanese influences Glasgow was the main centre where Rene Mackintosh was the leader of the “Group of Four” that developed the style The main work is the Glasgow Art School

17. United Kingdom In Britain, In Glasgow, Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh also developed a rectilinear version of art nouveau, which he employed in numerous buildings and their furnishings. In the Glasgow School of Art, completed in two phases (eastern section 1897-1899, western section 1906-1909), he used contemporary materials in an elegant, angular style. Characteristics: The simple shapes of the brick and stone exterior clearly indicate the division of space within the building, while large expanses of glass provide a strong visual connection between the interior spaces and the outside world. Window mullions (dividers between panes of glass), doors, and fences use ironwork in an elegant linear or geometric manner. This seemingly simple design offers a strong contrast to the ornate architecture based on past styles that was typical of the time.

18. Belgium The name "Art Nouveau" was first created in this country and was associated with a will of creating a new tradition centred on the human being. Art Nouveau artists were often concerned by all the aspects that surround us therefore architecture was a place of integration of all arts including dressing design. Many artists developed numerous skills, to make a global design of the houses. Victor Horta, the most well known one, designed the houses from the plan to stone work, from the furniture to the towels and chimney railings. There are two trends: Curve: Victor Horta, Van de Velde Geometrical: Hankar, Van de Velde

19. Belgium Art Nouveau architecture, in Brussels, flourished in the work of Belgian designers Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde. These Belgian designers sought to create a new style, free from the historical references of prevailing traditions. They utilized standard wrought iron and cast-iron technology, but employed it to create distinctly new forms. In the Hôtel Tassel in Brussels (1892-1893), Horta not only revealed the structural column that supports the second floor, but transformed its cast-iron form into a plantlike stem that terminates in a burst of intertwined tendrils as it connects with other structural elements.

20. France In France designer Hector Guimard designed entrances for the Metro stations in Paris (1898-1901) using simple metal and glass forms decorated with curvilinear wrought iron. These are especially memorable examples of art nouveau's delightfully curving naturalistic forms. The style developed in Paris and Nancy

21. Germany Art nouveau took hold in a number of German-speaking cities, the most prominent of which were Munich, Darmstadt, and Weimar in Germany, and Vienna in Austria. Known as Jugendstil (German for “youth style”), art nouveau was promoted in Munich through periodicals such as Die Jugend (The Youth)

22. Wien : The Sezession The Wien Sezession was created in May 1897 by the famous painter Gustav Klimt. The first members included Josef Maria Olbrich, Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser and Rudolph Bacher. When Otto Wagner met the group the movement took another dimension. In 1898, Olbrich built the Sezession building where the next exhibitions of the Sezession group took place. The Sezession motto: "To each time, its art; to art, its liberty." The building has white nude walls contrasting with its sculpted golden dome. It is decorated inside with the famous "Beethoven" freeze by Klimt.

23. Wien Stylistic trends in Vienna took a significantly different direction. Led by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, young artists and architects formed a group called the Wiener Sezession, or Vienna Secession, in protest against the entrenched conservatism of the art establishment in Vienna. As did their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, Sezession designers rejected historical styles; but in Vienna they expressed this through an increasing simplification of form. Rather than embracing the writhing organic forms of Endell or Olbrist in Munich, Viennese artists moved towards the restrained geometric designs exemplified by the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

24. Spain At the end of last century, Barcelona was quaked by anarchism together with Catalan nationalism. It was an area of quick industrial development and the artistic world was not forgotten. The Catalan modernism movement aimed to gather every artistic skill and wanted to get out of the steady and leisurely historicism like other European Art Nouveau movements. It starts from the 1880 with the painter Ramon Casas and the theoriser Cirici Pellicer. L'Eixample: This famous part of Barcelone gathers more than 150 modernist buildings including the Sagrada Familia. Famous Architects : Gaudi , Domenech i Montaner, Jujol, Puig y Cadafalch