Art Nouveau - at the Crossroads of Symbolism and Proto-rationalism

Authors

  • Jolanda Covre Nigro

Abstract

The Deutscher Werkbund organized a major exhibition in Cologne in 1914, where three buildings display the three features that characterized the full maturity of the Jugendstil movement in Germany, whose features can be traced back to Art Nouveau in Brussels and Paris, and to the Vienna Secession. These are van de Velde's Werkbund Theatre, Bruno Taut's Glass Pavilion, and Gropius's Model Factory. By 1902, the Brussels-trained Henry Clément van de Velde was in Germany, where he directed the Weimar School of Applied Art, and was already a wellestablished Art Nouveau architect and designer. Bruno J. Taut would later become better known for his utopian work - dubbed expressionist - after the end of the Great War in 1918, and eventually turned to a rather personal version of the rationalist school. Walter Gropius's architecture around this time was defined as proto-rationalist, and his approach matured with the foundation of the Bauhaus school in 1919, where he initially stressed a rather expressionist approach, and after a few years shifted to his typical rationalist focus. He was backed up by the example of Peter Behrens, who created the template for a new concept of industrial architecture and related design, characterized by a lean and generally abstract-geometrical interpretation of Jugendstil. Behrens, along with Joseph Hoffmann, attended the 1914 exhibition. The indications coming from van de Velde, Taut and Gropius's buildings remain highly symbolic to this day, albeit in different ways.

Author Biography

Jolanda Covre Nigro

Jolanda Covre Nigro is Professor of Contemporary Art History at Sapienza University in Rome. She studied the theoretical aspects of the visual arts and architecture and published essays on Worringer, Semper, Robert Vischer and the theory of Einfühlung, Schmarsow, Taut, Finsterlin. She favoured the themes of the first avant-gardes and their relations with music and theater: Der Blaue Reiter, Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Cubism. Some titles: “Il cubismo dei cubisti†(with M. G. Messina), Rome, Officina, 1986; “L'arte tedesca del Novecentoâ€, Rome, Carocci, 1998; “Astrattismo. Temi e forme dell'astrazione nelle avanguardie europeeâ€, Milan, Motta, 2002; “Arte contemporanea - Le Avanguardie storicheâ€, Rome, Carocci, 2008; “Arte contemporanea: tra astrattismo e realismo 1918-1956†(with I. Mitrano), Rome, Carocci, 2011. She writes also for a number of journals such as “Ricerche di Storia dell'arte†and “Art e Dossier".

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Published

12.03.2014

How to Cite

Covre Nigro, J. (2014). Art Nouveau - at the Crossroads of Symbolism and Proto-rationalism. Uncommon Culture, 4(7/8), 22–31. Retrieved from https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/UC/article/view/5254

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