80s

Years of study

As of its studies of architecture, Guimard is sensitized with the theories of Eugene Emmanuel Purple-the-Duke which provides the foundations, since 1863, of the future principles structural of the Art nouveau. The conversion of Guimard to the style itself is as for it more detailed: it is done at the time of a voyage to Brussels, where he visits the Tassel hotel of Victor Horta. The emblématique realization of this time, the Manor house Béranger (1898), illustrates this moment of transition which sees the shock between these two heritages: on geometrical volumes of medieval inspiration of the carcass work heavy castings spreads with profusion the organic line “in whiplash” imported of Belgium.

A fulgurating glory

The Béranger Manor house makes Guimard famous of the day at the following day and of many orders its esthetic research always more - the harmony and the continuity stylistics then enable him to refine in particular (a major ideal of the Art nouveau), which push it with a quasi totalitarian design of the interior decoration, culminating in 1909 with the hotel Guimard (gift of wedding to its rich person marries American) where ovoid parts impose single pieces of furniture, integral part of the building.

If the well of light suitable for Victor Horta is a data rather absent from its work (except in the late example of the Mezzara hotel, of 1911), Guimard does not undertake of them less astonishing space experiments, in the volumetry of its constructions in particular: the Coilliot house and its disconcerting double-frontage (1898), Bluette and its beautiful volumetric harmony (1898), and especially the Manor house Henriette (1899) and Manor house of Orgeval (1905), radical demonstrations of “plan-free” vigorous and asymmetrical, twenty-five years before the theories of Le Corbusier. Symmetry is however not proscribed: the splendid Nozal hotel, in 1905, takes again the rational provision of a plan at right angles proposed by Purple-the-Duke.

The structural innovations do not miss either, as in the extraordinary concert hall Humbert-of-Novels (1901), where a complex frame splits the sound waves to lead to perfect acoustics; or as in the hotel Guimard (1909), where the narrowness of the piece makes it possible the architect to reject any carrying function on the external walls and to thus release the fitting of interior spaces, different from one stage to another; etc

Brilliant touch-with-all, Guimard is also a precursor of the industrial standardization, insofar as it wishes to diffuse new art with large scales. From this point of view he knows a true success - in spite of the scandals - with his famous entries of the Parisian Métro, constructions flexible where triumph the principle of the ornament structural of Purple-the-Duke. The idea is taken up - but with less success - in 1907 with a catalog of cast iron elements applicable to architecture: Artistic Pig iron and cast iron, Style Guimard .

As for the comprehensive architectural framework, the intrinsic design of its objets d'art proceed of the same ideal of formal continuity (which makes it possible to amalgamate all the practical functions in a single body, as for the Vase of Binelles, of 1903) - and linear, as in the drawing of its pieces of furniture, with the silhouette gracile and harmonious.

Its inimitable stylistic vocabulary proceeds of a particularly suggestive vegetable organicism, while remaining resolutely on the slope of the abstraction. Nervous Moulurations and movements invest the stone thus as well as wood; in the flat tint, Guimard creates true abstract compositions which adapt with same ease to the stained glass (Mezzara hotel, 1903), with the panel of ceramics (Coilliot house, 1898) with the ironwork (Henriette Manor house, 1899), with the wallpaper (Béranger Manor house, 1898) or with the fabric (Guimard hotel, 1909).

The lapse of memory

But in spite of this fireworks of innovations and overall demonstrations, the world is diverted quickly of Guimard: less than work, it is the man who aggravates. And into worthy representing Art nouveau, it is itself victim of contradictions inherent in the ideals of the movement: its most completed creations are financially inaccessible to the greatest number, and contrary its attempts to standardization tally badly with its very personal vocabulary. It is finally completely forgotten that it dies out in New York in 1942, where the fear of the war had made it be exiled (his wife is Jewish).

The redécouverte

After too many destruction, explorers isolated (first “hectorologists”) leave to redécouverte from the artist and his universe about the years 1960-1970 and reconstitute its history patiently. If the essence were made from this point of view, it remains that, hundred years after the “splendid gesture” of the Art nouveau (Le Corbusier), the majority of the buildings of Hector Guimard remain inaccessible to the public, and that a Guimard museum was still not inaugurated in France.

Chronology

1882 School of Decorative Arts of Paris with the teaching of Charles Genuys.
1885 School of Beautiful arts of Paris.
1888 Café concert In large Neptune (quay of Auteuil, XVIe district of Paris).
1889 World Fair of Paris: house of electricity
1891 Guimard becomes professor at the School of Decorative Arts. It remains there until in 1900
1891 Hôtel Roszé (street Boileau, XVIe district of Paris)
1894 Hôtel Jassedé (street Thistle-Lagache), Hôtel Delfau (street Molitor), Rencontre with Paul Hankar, Chapelle Devos-Logie and Mirand-Devos with the Cimetière of Gonards to Versailles
1895 Atelier Carpeaux (Exelmans boulevard, Paris), École of Crowned Heart, meets with Victor Horta, beginning of construction of the Castel Béranger (street The-Fountain, Paris).
1896 Villa Berthe or Hublotière with the Vésinet. ()
1897 Hector Guimard moves in this residential building to moderate rents.
1898 Fine of the construction of the Manor house Béranger called “disturbed” by its contemporaries; House Coilliot (14, rue Fleurus with Lille).
1899 Villa Bluette (Hermanville, Apple-brandy),
1900 Construction of the shelters and buildings of the stations of the subway in Paris.
1901 Room Humbert-of-Novels (Paris), Manor house Henriette (street of Binelles, Sevres, Hauts-de-Seine),
1903 Manor house Valley (4, rue des Meulières, Auvers-sur-Oise), Villa the Fir plantation (Hermanville).
1904 Orgeval Manor house with Villemoisson-on-Barley, Hotel Leon Nozal (XVIe district of Paris), White Country cottage (2, rue du Lycée, Seals), Manor house Orgeval (2 avenue de la Mare-Tambour, Villemoisson-on-Barley).
1905 Hotel Deron Levet, Country cottage White (Seals)
1909 Real Spring wheat (11, rue François Millet, XVIe district of Paris), street Agar, Hector Guimard marries Adeline Oppenheim, Hôtel Guimard on a triangular piece.
1910 Hotel Mezzara (60, rue La Fontaine, XVIe district of Paris)
1913 Synagog of the street Paved in Paris (10, rue Pavée in IVe district of Paris), villa Hemsy (3, rue Crillon, Saint-Cloud).
1924 Villa Flora (which occurred Mozart, XVIe district of Paris)
1926 Investment property (street Henri Heine, Paris)
1928 Investment property (street Greuze, Paris)
1938 Guimard and his wife settle with New York

Internal bonds

External bonds

the Guimard Circle - association for the protection and the promotion of the work of Hector Guimard
lartnouveau.com - the work of Hector Guimard in Paris and in France
Archiguide - achievements of Hector Guimard
Parisinconnu - shelters of Hector Guimard in Paris

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