May 2010 will see the launch of a five-year project on the relationship between Art Nouveau & Ecology, organised by the Réseau Art Nouveau Network. The 22 institutions in Europe and farther afield that form the Network share a common interest in the world's Art Nouveau legacy. The new topic will be approached through a travelling, hands-on exhibition titled "Art Nouveau & Nature" in addition to an international colloquium to celebrate the Network's tenth anniversary in Brussels on 4-5 December 2010. The project will examine how Art Nouveau is perceived and will embrace a variety of materials and activities for a wide-ranging audience that includes the general public, professionals in the field, the university community, and children. Planned are two "historical labs" - or symposia - each year, as well as publications, educational materials, a website, online activities and newsletters. The network will also reach out to persons who are visually impaired and is currently studying the viability of a special exhibition for them.
The following municipal or regional members are taking part: Ålesund, Norway; Aveiro, Portugal; Bad Nauheim, Germany; Barcelona and Terrassa, Spain; Brussels, Belgium; Darmstadt, Germany; Helsinki, Finland; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Nancy, France; Lombardy, Italy; and Riga, Latvia. There are also three associates: Glasgow, United Kingdom; La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland; and Havana, Cuba.
Anne-Sophie Riffaud Buffat
Coordinator, Réseau Art Nouveau Network, Brussels
Réseau Art Nouveau Network to Start a New Project
08.07.2010 | Published by Anne-Sophie Riffaud Buffat
The Apollo Cinema in Tbilisi
08.07.2010 | Published by Nestan Tatarashvili
From the point of view of the functional diversity of Art Nouveau, Georgia has a wealth of material to offer. In addition to apartment blocks, this style was used in buildings such as banks, colleges, shops, cinemas, hospitals, factories and restaurants. Tbilisi has a tobacco factory and a thermal power plant; Poti, a small city in western Georgia, has a library and a caravanserai; and historical cemeteries contain some wonderful monuments.
The most outstanding buildings are the Art Nouveau cinemas. The arrival and spread of Art Nouveau architecture and motion pictures took place simultaneously, and these two innovative art forms enjoyed great success in Georgia. A good example is the Apollo Cinema, an Art Nouveau movie theatre built in Tbilisi in 1909. Another cinema (now the Music Centre) was built there in 1914, but only the entrance hall and small parts of the façade remain today. In the middle of the twentieth century, two Art Nouveau movie theatres - Mon Plaisir in Kutaisi and the Apollo in Batumi - were destroyed. Only the Apollo Cinema has been preserved in its original form.
The Apollo, which continued to be used as a cinema during the Soviet period, is an architectural monument of national importance. It has been in private ownership for several years, but it is nonetheless neglected and unprotected.
In February this year, Tbilisi City Council started work on the rehabilitation of the buildings on David Agmashenebeli Avenue, and among these is the Apollo.
The importance of this building needs to be recognised by its owners and by Georgian society, particularly specialists in the protection of historic monuments. The Apollo must be carefully restored, preserved and used once again as a cinema.
Nestan Tatarashvili
Architect, Head of the Georgian Art Nouveau Preservation Group, Tbilisi
New Modernista Museum in Majorca
08.07.2010 | Published by Antònia Maria Miró Crespí and Rogelio Araújo Gil
A sea of flowers and sinuous, animal-like, natural forms greets the visitor to Can Prunera, the new Modernista Museum set up by the Art Train Foundation in Sóller, Majorca. The house, constructed between 1904 and 1911, was a consequence of the period of emigration from Sóller to France in the second half of the nineteenth century. After having made their fortune there, the Magraner family decided to return to Majorca and build what was to become their family home in the new style they had seen in France: Art Nouveau.
The museum opened to the public on 24 August 2009, the feast of St. Bartholomew, patron saint of the town, and therefore a local holiday.
The transformation of Can Prunera had been the goal of the Art Train Foundation since its inception in 2006 for the purpose of promoting contemporary art in Sóller in conjunction with the historic railway from Palma to Sóller that opened in 1912. The president of the foundation is Pere A. Serra, a journalist, businessman and, above all, a great collector and lover of contemporary art.
The period between 2006 - when the house was purchased - and 2009 saw the overall restoration of the building and its consolidation as a museum divided into three different sections: the rooms in the purest French Art Nouveau style, with a profusion of natural forms in the decoration of ceilings, floors, lamps, furniture and windows; the temporary exhibition area in the basement, where the kitchen and dining room share the space with shows by contemporary artists; and the top floor, housing a large part of the Serra Art Collection, which is on permanent display. Here can be found works by such masters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as Klimt, Picasso, Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Miró, Kandinsky and Warhol, which are certain to surprise and delight visitors.
Antònia Maria Miró Crespí
Head of Public Relations, Museu Modernista Can Prunera
Rogelio Araújo Gil
Director of the Fundació Tren de l'Art
"Da Capo 2011": The Restoration of the Liszt Academy of Music
08.07.2010 | Published by Jolán Rácz
The Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, one of the city's highlights, is both a significant cultural venue and a masterpiece of Art Nouveau architecture. The building will be restored in 2010 and 2011 to repair its structure and provide greater comfort, in a project to be carried out with European Union support.
This complex building, which houses an educational institution and two concert halls, was designed by Flóris Korb and Kálmán Giergl and opened in 1907. The academy is well proportioned, its main façade decorated with sculptures by the most widely recognized artists of the time. A monumental statue of founder Franz Liszt is set above the main entrance.
Outstanding in its own right, the building also showcases works of the highest quality in a setting marked by fine materials. Acid-etched and stained-glass windows and mosaics are from Miksa Róth's workshop, the interior tiling and decorative elements are from the Zsolnay factory, and the Pre-Raphaelite frescoes are by Aladár Körösf?i-Kriesh, founder of the Gödöll? Artists' Colony. The linoleum flooring of the foyers and staircases was a brave early twentieth-century experiment.
The roofing, ceilings and the balcony of the larger 1200-seat concert hall are constructed with reinforced concrete, making this the first large-span structure utilizing this material among public buildings in Hungary. The coherent colour-scheme and style of the interior decoration confer a sort of Egyptian flavour that creates a unique Art Nouveau style.
The Academy of Music closed its doors at the end of 2009 after the "Da Capo 2011" events, the most successful of which was the eight-hour "Beethoven Non-Stop" series of concerts, during which the composer's symphonies were played in their entirety.
The centenary of the Academy of Music was marked by the publication of a de luxe edition of a book with texts in Hungarian and English.
Jolán Rácz
Architect National Office of Cultural Heritage, Budapest
Jubilee in Bad Nauheim
08.07.2010 | Published by Metta Tiemon
The spa town of Bad Nauheim celebrated the centenary of its Art Nouveau theatre on 8 May 2010 with a splendid party. More than 700 guests enjoyed the jubilee evening of music, ballet, singing and sketches, and were received by members of the Jugendstilverein dressed in elegant Art Nouveau costumes of the late 1900s.
On Sunday, 9 May, the theatre held an open day for the public. Visitors were able to admire the original paintings and furniture, the ornate stairs and the elegant lamps of the late Art Nouveau period, and to see the theatre auditorium with its large chandeliers and richly painted decorations in golden tones around the stage, ceiling and fronts of the boxes.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, when the spa in Bad Nauheim became popular, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig, who had founded an artists' colony on Mathildenhoehe in Darmstadt, completely redesigned the spa complex. The young architect Wilhelm Jost reconstructed the Kurhaus (cure house), originally built in 1864 in the Italian Renaissance style, and added a new Art Nouveau theatre. Soon after its opening in 1910, it became the cultural centre of the town, where the international aristocracy and the wealthy upper classes met socially.
The Kurhaus was bombed in 1944. After repairs, performances were resumed in 1952, but a fire destroyed the theatre in 1980. Fortunately it was possible to reconstruct it following the original plans. Reopened in 1985, today it welcomes visitors to the original Art Nouveau design that is also preserved on the façade.
In 2004, the state of Hesse sold the Kurhaus together with the Art Nouveau theatre to the US hotel company Dolce, which will be organising the celebrations this year.
Metta Tiemon
President of the Jugendstilverein, Bad Nauheim