Collection Selection Boxes
Get closer to original Art Nouveau prints, drawings and photographs with our Collection Selection Boxes.
Decorative, sensual, and uncompromising, Art Nouveau ('New Art') emerged as a dynamic and expressive style in the visual arts from the early 1890s to the First World War. Taking its inspiration from the natural world, its characteristic motifs include delicate tendrils, organic forms, swooping, swirling lines, eccentric geometry and exotic bodies.
Viewed by some as the first self-conscious attempt to create a modern style, Art Nouveau steadily developed across Europe and America, and can be seen in painting, sculpture, jewellery, metalwork, glass and ceramics of the period. The seductive drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, the curvaceous architecture of Victor Horta and Paul Hankar and the ornate poster designs of Alphonse Mucha are some of the most familiar examples of the Art Nouveau style.
Get closer to original Art Nouveau prints, drawings and photographs with our Collection Selection Boxes.
Art Nouveau – an international style
Find out how Art Nouveau style emerged in several European countries under different names
Art Nouveau and the erotic
The risqué and often shockingly explicit content of many Art Nouveau works is one of the most striking features of the style
Aubrey Beardsley – decadence & desire
"I have one aim – the grotesque. If I am not grotesque, I am nothing"
Objects of beauty: Art Nouveau glass and jewellery
Discover the beauty of fin-de-siècle glass and jewellery, by some of the finest Art Nouveau designers
The Whiplash