Art Nouveau

At the end of last year one of the subjects that we studied in the Waverley Art Quilters was Art Nouveau, which is French for New Art.

Art Nouveau was only popular for a short time between 1890 and 1910 and was soon taken over by Art Deco which was very geometric and so different to the free flowing lines on Art Nouveau.

Examples of Art Nouveau can be found everywhere in beautiful buildings around the world but most commonly in jewellery, furniture, textiles and art.

One of the words used to describe the style was The Whiplash because of the sudden violent curves like a whip cracking.

Artists that were known for their Art Nouveau style were Gustav Klimt and Alphonse Mucha, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Rene Lalique and Antoni Gaudi.

We studied Klimt in 2009 and I made this little A3 quilt.

I have always loved Alphonse Mucha’s work and was inspired by his paintings when I was designing the centre of my Star Crazy quilt.

This is the A3 sized Art Nouveau quilt that I made at the end of last year. I put some Gum Tree blossoms on it to give it an Australian flavour.

I had painted some yellow dots on the top of the flowers but they seemed a bit lost so I added some gold beads and I am much happier about the quilt now.

Here is a close-up of the beading.

One of the books that I was reading while studying Art Nouveau said that the movement stopped because the artists and designers got so complicated with their whiplash technique there was nowhere else to go with it.

I tend to think that it started to seem a bit too frivolous when World War 1 started and the clean geometric lines of Art Deco seemed more appropriate.

I think that I’ll always love the Art Nouveau style though.

Bye for now,

Linda