Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Beginning & the End
Art Nouveau was an art form and architectural style that flourished in Europe and the USA
from 1890 to around 1910. It began in Britain as the Arts and Crafts Movement founded by
William Morris (1834-96), which stressed the importance of manual processes and attemp-
ted to create a new organic style in direct opposition to the imitative banalities spawned by
the Industrial Revolution.
The style soon spread to Europe, where it took on distinctly local and/or national charac-
teristics. In Vienna a group of artists called the Secessionists lent its name to the more geo-
metric local style of Art Nouveau architecture: Sezessionstil (Hungarian: Szecesszió). In
Budapest, the use of traditional facades with allegorical and historical figures and scenes,
folk motifs and Zsolnay ceramics and other local materials led to an eclectic style. Though
working within an Art Nouveau/Secessionist framework, this style emerged as something
that was uniquely Hungarian.
But fashion and styles changed as whimsically and rapidly at the start of the 20th century
as they do today, and by the end of the first decade Art Nouveau and its variants were con-
sidered limited, passé, even tacky. Fortunately for the good citizens of Budapest and us, the
economic and political torpor of the interwar period and the 40-year 'big sleep' after WWII
left many Art Nouveau/Secessionist buildings beaten but standing - a lot more, in fact, than
remain in such important Art Nouveau centres as Paris, Brussels and Vienna.
