Art Nouveau

PurplePrice Mag · October 26, 2026 · 3 min read

Art Nouveau is the style that dominated European architecture and decorative arts between 1890 and 1910, during the Belle Époque. It rejected the imitation of past styles and looked for a new language inspired by nature, to be applied to everything: buildings, furniture, glass, jewellery, posters.

The name, already used by the Belgian magazine L'Art Moderne, spread with the Maison de l'Art Nouveau, the gallery opened in Paris in 1895 by the art dealer Siegfried Bing.

One style, many names

The style changes its name from one country to another: Jugendstil in Germany, after the Munich magazine Jugend; Secession style in Austria, after the artists of the Vienna Secession; Modernisme in Catalonia; Modern Style in Britain; Nieuwe Kunst in the Netherlands. In Italy it is Stile Liberty or floreale: the name comes from Arthur Lasenby Liberty's London store Liberty & Co., which sold fabrics and decorative objects in this taste.

Its features

Its most recognisable sign is the whiplash line, sinuous and dynamic, which stylises stems, leaves, flowers and female figures. The materials of modernity, iron and glass, become expressive: iron bends into plant forms, glass takes on colour and becomes light. Behind it lie the English Arts and Crafts movement, with its love of craftsmanship, and the Japanese prints that reached Europe from the 1870s.

The protagonists

in Brussels Victor Horta, with the Hôtel Tassel (1893), one of the first Art Nouveau houses; his town houses are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site;
in Paris Hector Guimard, who designed the entrances of the Métro, and the graphic artist Alphonse Mucha, with his posters for Sarah Bernhardt;
in Nancy Émile Gallé and Louis Majorelle, with the glass and furniture of the École de Nancy, founded in 1901;
in Barcelona Antoni Gaudí, the most visionary interpreter of Modernisme;
in Glasgow Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow School, with more rigorous, geometric lines.

Its high point was the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, visited by almost fifty million people.

Stile Liberty in Italy

In Italy the style took hold with the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in Turin in 1902. Its protagonists include the architects Raimondo D'Aronco, Ernesto Basile in Palermo and Giuseppe Sommaruga in Milan, and the cabinetmaker Carlo Bugatti, with his exotic-looking furniture.

The decline

Even before the First World War, Art Nouveau seemed exhausted, accused of decorative excess. In the 1920s it gave way to Art Deco and the Modern Movement, which nonetheless inherited its legacy: the idea that art and everyday objects should speak the same language.