Driehaus Museum. Republished by permission of Yale University Press. The work of French architect Hector Guimard — has come to define art nouveau in the popular imagination. Introduced to an international audience at the Exposition universelle in Paris, the art nouveau style represented a radical break from the classical and revival styles of the nineteenth century in its embrace of naturalistic forms and its unity of architectural, decorative, and fine arts.
Underlying the sinuous curves and often exuberant ornament of his buildings and furnishings is a rejection of classicism in favor of a nature-based aesthetic, a use of industrial technologies, and a unified design of architecture and the arts.
Guimard also focused on making modern design affordable, accessible, and a force for social good—an approach that aligned his work with concurrent modern movements in Europe and America. Sigman, In , the Guimard family moved to Paris, where Hector was already at school. His studies focused on classic Beaux-Arts training. In , while still in school, and without an apprenticeship or any experience with an established firm, Guimard began working as an architect. Function and materials dictated form, and industrial production was embraced.
Although Guimard found the Beaux-Arts tradition essential in architectural education, he diverged from its general emphasis on grand and ornate classicism in favor of an abstract modern style based on natural forms, which he judged appropriate for the Industrial Age. Viollet-le-Duc proposed using modern building materials, such as cast iron, and rationalist methods of construction. Contemporaneous with art nouveau, the Arts and Crafts movement also shared the objective of reforming design.
Although specific attributes varied from one interpretation to the next, all were characterized by a rejection of historicism, a unity of design elements, and a focus on nature as formal inspiration. His work was distinctive in its combination of multiple materials, including cast and wrought iron, lava, concrete, ceramic, multiple colors of brick, and numerous types of stone, such as buhrstone and sandstone.
