A significantly important event connected to art and culture opened its doors to visitors in Milan on the 27th of February. The Art Déco: The Triumph of Modernity exhibition at Palazzo Reale is an event dedicated to celebrating the centenary of Art Déco, a style that emerged from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925. From glassware and ceramics to jewelry and haute couture dresses, the exhibit covers approximately 250 works of art.

From Paris to the world

Art Déco, short for Arts Décoratifs, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that firstly was presented in Paris in the early 1910s. Even though the style has experienced a plethora of declines and revivals, it was able to flourish in between the period of WW1 and WW2 as well as after. Nevertheless, the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris in 1925 was a turnover for Art Déco which brought the style to the spotlight. There, a huge variety of designers and artists in different professional areas were brought together and numbered approximately 15000 people. 

Emerging and developing in the Post-WW1 Europe period, it actually prospered and gained advantage during the time of economic and cultural transformations. At the time, it received recognition not only in Europe, but also across South and North America. Thus, the classic examples were built during the 1920s, for instance, the Chrysler Building in New York City and Christ the Redeemer, the famous 98-foot statue of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

“The Art Deco, The Triumph of Modernity is a unique opportunity to rediscover the beauty and complexity of a period of transformations and contrasts, where the dream of elegance accessible to all was interwoven with the drive towards innovation, bequeathing a legacy that continues to inspire our imagination to this day.“

Tommaso Sacchi

Canvas of luxury

Luxurious materials, symmetry, geometric patterns, maximalism and streamlined aesthetics became synonymous with modernity and progress. Nowadays, Art Déco is inspiring architecture, fashion, and interior design, leaving its mark in cities worldwide. Starting from the geometric forms on canvases to the metallic sculptures that occupied spaces, these artworks promoted the dynamic interplay between art and technology. Artists of the beginning of the 20th century were inspired from diverse sources, including ancient cultures and contemporary industrial design, to create pieces that were admired and will continue to be. One of the greatest instances provided by the exhibit is the famous work of Galileo Chini “Allegoria della primavera” (Allegory of Spring) or a captivating Attilio Selva‘s “Enigma”.

The french expression of Art Déco

French art expression had always been characterized by their admiration for luxury, reaching a peak in the 1925 expo. On the other hand, Art Déco targeted the petty bourgeoisie. To do so, they used a more impoverished and accessible style. These years were characterized by a more decorative taste, such as the ceramics produced in Sèvre, watercolours by Erté, using an abstract geometric line, enamelled copper vases by Camille Fauré inspired by the Vienna Secession, and especially the works of Dagobert Peche and Otto Prutscher.

Wally Toscanini: a vision of timeless elegance

This mesmerising portrait of Wally Toscanini, painted by Alberto Martini, embodies true beauty, in simple words. But, it’s so much more than the eye can perceive. The masterpiece is a testament to allure, given how Toscanini’s gown resembles a river’s seamless flow, majestically blending into the darker fabric she’s resting on. However, the spotlight falls on her bedazzling and delicate pearls, which are a perfect balance for her extravagant headpiece. Her theatrical appeal was marvellously captured by Alberto Martini, as he achieved his goal of having painted a timeless icon, symbol of fashion and luxury morphed into one.

Exoticisms: savage nature

The Art Déco recalls the natural selection present in nature with all the savage, exotic, cruel depictions of the world that are fascinating at the same time by showing the fine line between Life and Death. Nineteenth-century animalier sculptures, represent these wild animal in a variety of environments, inhabit a virtual life in artificial forests suggested by fabrics and wallpaper characterized by exotic motifs.

Alfredo Biagini and Sirio Tofanari, sculpt animals in bronze, stone, earthenware; adding to these objects a fourth dimension with flavours and sounds of the tropical forest and the savage world, to then proceed to give life to the elegant houses of the members of the upper classes in the 1920s, cinemas, theatres, and spas. In the exposition there could be found the Lioness by Biagini, Tofanari’s disturbing Large Vulture and his chimpanzees, Lalique’s fish, and osaic by Pierre-Paul Jouve where a black panther is ensnared in mortal combat with a python.

The roaring twenties: a fashion revolution

Next up, gracing the exhibition we have the effortlessly & ethereal fashion of the ’20s. This particular period redefined what it truly means to dress with purpose, and those three exquisite dresses capture the essence of this revolutionary transformation. By taking a closer look, one can easily spot the pure sophistication in the sleek silhouettes of the mannequins. Especially the low waistlines – signature element of the decade – that completely reimagine grace and elegance. This is a nod to the rejection of the typical hourglass figure. The ’20s fashion exceeds the limits of simplicity with skirts that flow as if they’re a whisper of a movement. These gowns were more than just a change of style. Rather they were a statement  of women’s newfound freedom, expressed creatively yet shaped by the era’s context.

Exoticisms: the colonialist vision of the African world

This collection of artworks ought to draw anybody in, with the lively yet untamed energy they carry throughout – the twists, leaps and sways of the dancers, movements that have Jazz Age written all over them.  On one hand, these illustrations can be perceived as a mere tribute to the art of dancing. On the other, they were also inspired by Joséphine Baker’s performances. They strongly mirror how Paris was enthralled by emerging artistic tendencies of the ‘20s – particularly those shaped by the vivacity of African American performers, and their deep cultural roots. Overall, the pictures string together a chain of cadence, rhythm and cultural reinterpretation, simultaneously framing the stylistic narrative of that decade.

Exoticisms: the seductive beauty of the orient

The 1920s in Europe have been marked by the Orient, inspired by Ancient Egypt to Babylonia, from the Temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia to the mysterious India, all the way to Imperial China and Japan. Francesco Nonni exhibited Oriental Procession: a centrepiece that portrays a sacred procession with an underlying taste of seductiveness in the graceful act.

In addition, a desire for the folkloric world of Slavik culture sprung in Paris inspired by Sergei Diaghilev‘s Ballets Russes, particularly in the syncopated choreographies and the costumes of its most famous dancers, Vaslav Nijinsky and Ida Rubinstein. Their movements inspired the chryselephantine sculptures of Demetre Chiparus.

Triumph and end of Art Déco

1925 was the year when Paris Grand exhibition astonished the public with the world vision free of the dull of  everyday life and connect beauty with luxury and elegance with lifestyle, which led to its widespread success in the following years. In 1927 Gio Ponti and Tomaso Buzzi created their centerpiece for the Embassies: an accurate remake of the “Venetian-style garden”, by turning highly refined white porcelain with a gold finish into tritons, seahorses, small animals, smiling cupids, miniature trees, and architectural elements with, at the very centre, the personification of Italy atop a shell emerging from a fantastic sea world.

The seductive feminine eternity was present with the fireworks, spurting fountains, alluring winks, feline footsteps, while a more subtle and ambiguous male figure is underlying,  in the form of a dandy or a weary pilgrim. The mischievous Rococo, the Orient in the sitting room, the Charleston, the mechanical rhythm, the lightning-fast line, the untiring search for the pleasure of living, all this signaled all that Art Déco had been or had desired to be, was rapidly reaching the final of it’s creative potential.

The final part dedicated to: the 1930S and the monumental art
of the novecento style

Art Déco reaches a crises in the early 1930s being replaced by Novecento style, that left no room for Déco‘s delicateness due to the admiration of the monumental, graphism by plasticity, tongue-in-cheek iconographies, so fragile as to seem mawkish, by the advent of a peremptory narrative and new themes having a strong ideological impact. For this, Art Déco went through a transformation abandoning its lavish and dry repertoire in its various expressions. The ceramic manufacturing made were basic, tectonic forms produced in a mould and finished with glazing.

^{Featured image by Giselle Salvadori (Ph)}