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Art Nouveau by City: Brussels, Vienna, Nancy, Glasgow, Barcelona
Five cities took five different routes. Reading Art Nouveau geographically works better than reading it as one style.
Art Nouveau (roughly 1890–1910) has a different name in every country: Art Nouveau in Belgium, Jugendstil or Secession in Germany and Austria, Modernisme in Catalonia, Stile Liberty in Italy.
The names are not a translation problem. The practices genuinely differed. So the useful unit for this movement is the city, not the style.
What it was trying to do
Three shared commitments, across all countries:
- Total design. Architecture, interior, furniture, lighting, wallpaper, and typeface designed together. This comes from the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art.
- Form from nature. Vines, flowers, insects, and water abstracted into structure and line, rather than painted on as ornament.
- New industry. Cast iron, glass, colour lithography. Paris Métro entrances, department stores, and posters are all products of this technology and of a new consumer society.
It was reacting against two things: academic copying of the classical, and the cheap ugliness of industrial goods.
Five cities, five routes
Brussels: structure first
Victor Horta’s Tassel House (1893) is often treated as the first complete Art Nouveau interior: the iron columns are structure rather than ornament, and they are deliberately exposed.
In Brussels, the subject is iron and light, not pattern. The Horta Museum is Horta’s own house and studio (1898–1901), with interiors, ironwork, furniture, and mosaic floors in place — the most direct way to understand “total design”.
Vienna: geometry inside the curve
In 1897 Klimt, Hoffmann, Moser, and Olbrich left the conservative artists’ association and founded the Secession.
The exhibition building (1897–98) by Olbrich carries the motto on its façade: “To every age its art. To art its freedom.”
In the basement is Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze (1902), thirty-four metres long. The Wiener Werkstätte, founded in 1903, pushed this geometric language into everyday objects.
The difference from Brussels matters: the curve is still there, but Vienna moves toward the square and the grid — which is where Art Deco later comes from.
Nancy: workshops and materials
French Art Nouveau was not only Parisian. The École de Nancy, founded in 1901, gathered Gallé and the Daum brothers in glass, Majorelle in furniture, and Prouvé in ironwork, explicitly as an alliance of local industry and art.
The Musée de l’École de Nancy is strongest on material: layered glass, veneered wood, and hammered iron echoing each other in the hands of the same makers.
Ask one concrete question in Nancy: were the wood, metal, and glass in this object designed by the same person?
Glasgow: straight lines and emptiness
Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the “Glasgow Four” took another route: almost no curves, long straight lines, grids, large areas of blank surface, a little violet and silver.
The reference works are the Glasgow School of Art (1897–1909, under reconstruction after fires in 2014 and 2018) and Hill House (1902–04).
Kelvingrove holds Mackintosh material and the Glasgow School painters; the buildings themselves need a separate walk — see How to read architecture in the city.
Barcelona: Modernisme with architecture first
Catalan Modernisme put architecture at the centre: Gaudí (Sagrada Família from 1882, Casa Batlló 1904–06, Casa Milà 1906–12, Park Güell 1900–14) and Domènech i Montaner (Palau de la Música Catalana, 1905–08).
The MNAC’s modern art collections give the period’s painting, furniture, and decorative arts context. See the collection first, then the buildings; the sequence makes more sense that way.
Three common misreadings
- “Art Nouveau is ornament.” Its programme was total design; ornament is one result.
- “It was one international style.” The five cities differ more than they agree, which is why this is organised geographically.
- “Art Nouveau and Art Deco are the same.” Art Nouveau uses organic curves and handwork; Art Deco (1910s–1930s) uses geometry, machinery, metal, and lacquer. A generation apart, and opposed in intent.
A route that works
- Pick one city, not five.
- Find one complete interior (Horta Museum, Musée de l’École de Nancy) to understand total design.
- Then one public building (the Secession, the Palau de la Música) to see the language at architectural scale.
- Finally, look at print: posters, bookbinding, lettering. This is where Art Nouveau had the widest public reach.
What to do next
- On the timeline: Art movements.
- Reading objects: How to look at design.
- At city scale: How to read architecture in the city.