Here you can find the origins of Art Nouveau. The Gallery was the very first meeting place for designers and artists who exposed their works to a brand new idea of art and manufactures, thanks to an open-minded patron of art.
Image source:https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:H%C3%B4tel_Bing_en_1895.jpg
The Gallery
The Maison de l’Art Nouveau also called Bing Maison or Bing House was founded by Siegfried Bing in 1894. It is in 22, Rue de Provence in Paris and it was opened to organize art exhibitions to export art and objects from Japan. In 1895 it became an art gallery in which contemporary artists could expose their works and sell them.
Siegfried Bing
The German Siegfried Bing moved to Paris in 1854 with his father and become a collector and seller of Asiatic and especially Japanese artifacts.
He started to have a great passion for this culture and became the principal mediator between Europe and Japan in the field of art.
In Paris, he offered the chance to expose in his gallery to the artists that shared the vision of the art inspired by nature against the academic art.
Designers, Architects and Artists
Bing’s goal was to spread the style of Art Nouveau, a new conception of total art, based on the abolition of differences among the many types of art, and opened his gallery to those who shared this idea.
Some of the emerging artists that exposed their works in the gallery were Edward Munch, Auguste Rodin, Victor Rousseau, Paul Signac, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Henri van de Velde.
In the gallery were exposed objects of fine arts, applied and decorative arts, such as furniture, jewelry, like Tiffany or Van de Velde objects, ceramics, and glass artifacts.
Image source: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/2e0acc90-70a3-47fa-a904-f5369110de20 by Ben P L
Art Nouveau
The building itself was designed by the architect Louis Bonnier and the windows were made by Louis Comfort Tiffany on the project of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and others.
The gallery was really important to diffuse Art Nouveau through the salons of the World Exhibition of 1900 in Paris. It included fine arts and decorative arts, especially in architecture, and it was largely used in interior design projects.
It was called also Jugendstil, Liberty, Modern Style, Sezessionstil, Art Joven and Stile Floreale. The main inspiration comes from Japanese prints, thank to Bing’s experience, in which curves and organic lines were used as structures and nature and flowers as decorations.
Image source: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Art_nouveau_winter_garden.jpg
Info source:
https://www.hisour.com/it/history-of-art-nouveau-27653/
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