Artist 22: Hector Guimard

Hector Guimard was a French architect born in 1867.  He is best known for his French Art Nouveau style.  Since the 1960s Guimard’s reputation has been on the rise, being praised for his architectural and decorative style.  From 1882-1885 he attended the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, while there he acquired rationalist ideas that provided the basis of his style.  In 1898 Guimard designed the Castel Beranger, which made him famous through his display of tension between the medieval sense of geometrical volume and organic lines.  He was especially devoted to the Art Nouveau ideal of harmony and continuity; this led him to not only design the exterior of buildings but also the interior.  Guimard was a precursor of industrial standardization because he wanted to diffuse new art on a large scale.  Moving into pieces of art rather than architecture, he continued to have the same formal continuity and harmoniously connected practical function with linear design.  In both his stone and woodcarvings he created a sense of movement in his sculptures.  His abstract two-dimensional patterns were used in stained glass, ceramic panels, wrought iron, wallpaper and fabric.  Unfortunately most of his works were demolished and due to his fear of war and the anti-Semitism of the Nazi party forced him into exile and in 1942 when he died, he was largely forgotten.  Although most of his work was lost, there was a rediscovery of his work in the 1960s.