The discovery of Japanese earthenware, or more specifically chawan (tea bowls), led to a renewal of ceramics in Europe at the end of the 20th century. The event represented a veritable shock for artists, because its aesthetics of "imperfection" were in contrast to European ceramics at the time. It allowed French ceramicists, and later Belgian, to free themselves from historical conventions. The artisanal and unique nature of these art objects followed the foundations of Art Nouveau and represented a way of opposing industrial art.

French artists such as E. Chaplet, J. Carriès or A. Dalpayrat blazed the trail. Their research led them to experiment with glazes and forms, following the example of Japanese master ceramicists. Their works were notably present in universal expositions at the time, in the Cercle des XX and in the exhibition room of La Libre Esthétique in Brussels.

Belgian artists such as A. W. Finch, O. Coppens and A. Craco threw themselves into ceramics under the influence of ideas from the Arts & Crafts and they discovered an example to follow in the work of French and Japanese ceramicists. Their techniques and aesthetic concepts are both personal and close to the spirit of chawan.

Under the title Modernista: Gaudí and His Contemporaries in Modern Barcelona, an exhibition on Barcelona's Modernisme is being held at The Lighthouse in Glasgow until 28 February 2010. Architecture and Design Scotland, the organisation that recently took over running The Lighthouse, has been the main promoter of this exhibition, with the support of the Clydesdale Bank. The Urban Landscape Institute of Barcelona has also participated in the project, a bilateral cooperation of two Art Nouveau European Route members.

The exhibition is to a great extent an author's work: the personal perspective of Michael Thomas Jones, a young Scottish photographer who graduated from the Glasgow School of Art. Jones set out to capture the day-to-day life of Barcelona's Modernisme, with special attention being paid to the people who live and work in the architectural works of Gaudí and other Modernista masters. With the support of the Urban Landscape Institute - which has been running the Barcelona Modernisme Route since 1997 - the photographer was able to access the most hidden corners of the buildings and got to know many of the dwellers on a first-name basis during his month-long assignment.

The result is a collection of striking photographs in which Jones makes no concessions to aesthetic prejudices but instead allows contrasts and contradictions to surface and feature centre stage. Thus we are shown the rear, hidden façades of World Heritage monuments riddled with air-conditioning contraptions, or beautiful ironwork gates next door to anodyne and impersonal modern shop signs. It may be said that Jones's exhibition shows Barcelona's Modernisme as it has never been shown in an exhibition before - and certainly not in a coffee-table book - and that he has undoubtedly captured Barcelona's Modernisme as Barcelonans themselves truly see it every day.

The catalogue of the exhibition, also co-financed between Glasgow and Barcelona, includes an introduction by the Barcelona-resident Scottish architect David Mackay.

The Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest presents "Lilies Sprung upon a Barren Rock": Hungarian Art Nouveau Furniture Designers, an exhibition on Art Nouveau furniture (1896-1914) beginning with Hungarian Art Nouveau and including the most important designers of Ödön Lechner's style. His designs for the museum's original furnishings can be seen, along with armchairs designed by Marcell Komor for the city hall of Subotica and outstanding furniture designs that Ödön Faragó created for Queen Elizabeth's "Garden Room" in Buda Castle.

Many Hungarian Art Nouveau designers were in tune with the New Style's international trends and works by Frigyes Spiegel, Pál Horti, József Rippl-Rónai or unknown Hungarian masters show the influence of French Art Nouveau, German Jugendstil, Viennese Secession and British Arts & Crafts. The museum also commemorates the Gödöll? Arts & Crafts Workshop, with its principal figures and followers - Ede Toroczkai Wigand, Aladár Körösf?i Kriesch, Béla Pálinkás or Károly Kós - committed to finding a "pure source", which they discovered by investigating folk art, thus a national style appeared more faithfully in their works than in Lechner's art.

The museum ends with the precursors of trends between the two World Wars, with late Art Nouveau designers preceding Art Deco and other modern movements, highlighted by the art of Béla Lajta, who designed the furniture for the Bard Music Store in Hungarian Art Nouveau style, chairs for the Institute of the Blind using forms from Hungarian folk art, and the Vas Street Trade School in his own style, which was already leaning towards Art Deco. Pieces by Lajos Kozma, József Vágó, Miklós Menyhért or Dénes Györgyi also show the characteristic features of late Art Nouveau.

The exhibition includes about 100 pieces of furniture from Hungarian and foreign museums and private collections, as well as 120 archival photos, plans and drawings.

The Social Work of  Caixa Catalunya will transport you to one of the richest periods in the cultural and artistic history of Barcelona at the end of the 19th century, when the city became the privileged setting of modernisme.

The exhibition consists of 90 works of Catalan modernisme by Gaudí among others. The items, including paintings, sculptures, furniture and decorative art, all come from the collection of "Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya" (The National Art Museum of Catalonia).

The latest research carried out by the Mathildenhöhe Institute-Darmstadt is the result of a comprehensive retrospective on the work of Joseph Maria Olbrich to be inaugurated in Darmstadt at the beginning of February 2010. The exhibition, entitled Joseph Maria Olbrich 1867-1908, Architect and Creator of Early Modernity, is being curated by Dr. Regina Stephan, professor of the history of architecture at the Mainz University of Applied Sciences, in collaboration with Vienna's Leopold Museum.

Experts on Olbrich's work consider him to be the great moderniser of the world and lifestyles, but his premature death and the destruction of many of his works during the Second World War meant that his output has perhaps not had the same international impact as other artists of his age, such as Henry van de Velde, Josef Hoffmann or Peter Behrens. This is why the instigators of the exhibition and catalogue aim to provide the general public with information about the relevance of the artistic legacy that Joseph Maria Olbrich left around 1900 in Darmstadt and other cities like Vienna or in the Rhineland.

This major retrospective has been made possible thanks to the latest research that has been carried out on this great architect and designer based on the interest created during the international conferences organised by Mathildenhöhe-Darmstadt on the occasion of the centenary of J. M. Olbrich's death (see coupDefouet nº 11). The exhibition includes reconstructions of Olbrich's projects through the use of original sketches, models, historical photographs and many objects from such diverse fields as graphic design, furniture, crafts and textile art.

The show can be visited from 7 February until 24 May 2010 at the Mathildenhöhe Institute-Darmstadt, with family days between 20 and 25 April, including a special games route for children on the 25^th.

As one of the activities forming part of the new "Art Nouveau and Ecology" project, the Réseau Art Nouveau Network is organising a series of five Historical Laboratories with the support of the European Union's Culture Programme for 2007-2013.

The first laboratory will be held in Terrassa on Thursday, 3 June 2010, and will be on the subject of The Art Nouveau Herbarium.It will take place at the Museu de la Ciència i la Tècnica de Catalunya (mNACTEC).

The attached document contains information on the meeting together with the registration form, which should be completed and sent to @terrassa.cat by 27 May.

The activity is free of charge but attendees must register in advance. There will be simultaneous translation into English, French and Catalan.

Programme (Catalan-French-English)

Art Nouveau presents itself with good reason as breaking with the styles of the past, and promoting a "modern" environment based on a revival of forms and decorations. From the point of view of work produced, on the other hand, and this in spite of its social aspirations, it belongs to the tradition of the often-expensive technical experiments that brought fame to the luxury goods industries in France throughout the 19th century and until the early 20th century.

The objects as well as the preparatory drawings presented in this exhibition are evidence of the sophistication that French manufactories and creative artists brought to the art of living.

Catalan Modernisme is one of the most interesting movements in the broad process of modernisation that profoundly transformed the European art scene as a result of economic and social changes at the turn of the century.

Travelling exhibition.

The members of the group of artists, founded in 1848, in London called the Pre-Raphaelites were most consistent in pursuing or renewing the arts compared with official Victorian art. At the tail end of the 19th century their art ended up in international symbolism and Art Nouveau amid the increasing symbolism of the collection of pictures.

The exhibition presents major works of the Pre-Raphaelite masters Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and Sir John Everett Millais.
Frederic Leighton's Flaming June, one of the most well-known paintings in art history, and five, in part, monumental, major works by Edward Burne-Jones, are the highlight of this exhibition.
With the support of the young Rossetti, William Morris, Walter Crane and Burne-Jones created a picture sequence after Thomas Malory's Arthur legend. Three works created in this connection by Burne-Jones - one of which is more than six metres wide - can be seen at the  Belvedere Show as well as his picture sequence Sleeping Beauty, which was completed in 1873.

The exhibition contains a collection of pictures of the start of the modern trend which, to date, has attracted little attention in Austria, and allows visual scouting trips through the presentation worlds of individual major proponents of the Pre-Raphaelites and the major topics at the tail end of the 19th century.

Picasso expert Pierre Daix has written that the Catalan artist Santiago Rusiñol exercised a crucial influence on the young Picasso. This exhibition aims to explore this claim in depth and establish the elements of influence and confluence between the two artists by way of a comparative reading, both biographical and iconographic.

Organized jointly by the Museu Picasso and Cau Ferrat in Sitges, Rusiñol-Picasso will put on show for the first time the strong links between the two artists on the basis of the thesis developed by its curator, Eduard Vallès, in his recent book Picasso i Rusiñol. La cruïlla de la modernitat (Consorci del Patrimoni de Sitges, Barcelona 2008).

The paths of the two artists crossed at a time when their respective careers were in transition: Picasso was emerging from the academic tutelage of his father and the art schools he had attended and Rusiñol, though a highly acclaimed artist, was no longer the paradigm of modernity he had once been.

When Picasso first arrived in Barcelona Rusiñol was one of the city's most renowned artists. It is worth noting that a number of the themes the young Picasso tackled had their origin in pioneering works by Rusiñol. Picasso even painted his own versions of some of Rusiñol's pictures, an indication the works that made of how closely he followed the older man's work.

The great attraction that Picasso was to feel for the work of El Greco throughout his life first manifested itself precisely at the time when Rusiñol was championing him.

Rusiñol was also one of the first collectors of Picasso's work and thus one of the first to perceive their value. A number of these Rusiñol Picassos are in Cau Ferrat in Sitges, the private museum founded by Rusiñol which Picasso visited on several occasions, both as a young man and in his mature years. In fact, during the 1960s Picasso made some little-known illustrations based on Rusiñol's most famous work, L'auca del Senyor Esteve; these are also part of this exhibition, and show that the connection between the two artists still endured long beyond Picasso's Barcelona years.

On September 12th all bathhouses of the Sprudelhof will be open. The association Jugendstilverein will offer guided tours all day long. In addition the Jugendstilverein will run a Café in bathhouse 4 with drinks and homemade cakes in a cheerful and relaxed atmosphere.

The Scottish photographer Michael Thomas Jones portrays Modernisme in Barcelona just as it is, without concealing its contradictions or making any concessions to artiness. He depicts Modernisme as it has never before been seen in an exhibition, peopled by those who are today living or working in the architectural masterpieces designed by Gaudí and other Catalan architects.
"Gaudí and His Contemporaries in Modern Day Barcelona" is a joint exhibition by Barcelona City Council´s Institute for Urban Landscape and the Scottish Executive´s Architecture+Design Scotland. After having been on show in Glasgow until February 2010, it has finally arrived in Barcelona and can be visited in the Sant Salvador pavilion at the Hospital de Sant Pau from 24 April onwards throughout the summer.

Special Event to launch Europeana´s new digital Art Nouveau exhibition.
The presentation by Prof. Dr. Werner Adriaenssens, Curator of Decorative Arts of the 20th Century at the Royal Museum for Art and History, will take place at the Belgian Comic Strip Centre at 15:00h.

The international symposium "Perception of Art Nouveau" offers an overview of the history of Art Nouveau from its heyday (1880-1920) - which brought it as many admirers as detractors, as articles and caricatures testify - to its rediscovery by artists and intellectuals (1930-1950). It is also assessed from an economic and tourist point of view.
This event is included in the framework of Belgian´s Presidency of the European Union.

Press release (Available in Catalan language)

This October, the Neue Galerie New York will present the first major museum exhibition ever held in the United States devoted exclusively to the postcards produced by the Wiener Werkstätte. The show is drawn exclusively from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection and coincides with the gift to the Neue Galerie of nearly 1,000 postcards produced by the firm during the period 1907-1920.

This small-format show, produced as part of the new arrangement of the museum´s collection, is an exploration of Science and Charity, painted by Picasso in 1897. The canvas is an emblematic work from the artist´s early years. The subject matter falls into the genre of Social Realism that was so prevalent in the more conservative artistic circles of the second half of the nineteenth century and follows the line of works shown at the main art exhibitions of the 1890s.