Hector Guimard (Lyon, March 10 1867 - New York, May 20 1942) is the major representative of Art Nouveau in France.

In a international context of Art Nouveau, Guimard appears as an isolated sniper : he leaves any disciple behind him, nor there are no school, & this is how come history was an extended instance tempted to regard him as a secondary actor of this movement – an absence of posterity which contrasts by owning a extraordinary formal & typological profuseness of his architectural & cosmetic act, around which a designer gives a right of himself in two or three 15 years of an amazing creation.

Years of study
When of his studies of architecture, Guimard discovers Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc theories, that provide the foundations, since 1863, of the first structural information of Art Nouveau. a Guimard conversion to the style itself is when for it further sudden : these are done in the period of a hike to Brussels, in which he visits the Tassel hotel of Victor Horta. A characteristic realization of this period, a Castel Béranger [http://rubens.anu.edu.au/raid3/new/france/paris/cityscape/rue_la_fontaine/14_castel_beranger_guimard/] (1898), illustrates this moment of transition which understands a shock between these deuce heritages : on a mediaeval inspirated geometric volumes of the carcase act spreads by having cornucopia the organic line « around blow of whip » [http://www.arch.mcgill.ca/prof/schoenauer/arch528/lect10/b12.jpg] imported of Belgium.

A flashing glory
the Castel Béranger makes Guimard celebrated of a day at a below day & several orders so enable him to prove my point his pleasing search universally supplementary – the stylistic harmony and continuity particularly (a major ideal of Art Nouveau), which push him towards the quasi totalistic project of the interior decoration, culminating in 1909 by using a hotel Guimard [http://lartnouveau.com/artistes/guimard/122_av_mozart_hotel_guimard1.htm] (gift of wedding to his rich U.s. married woman) in which oval-shaped rooms [http://lartnouveau.com/artistes/guimard/mozart_122/interieur/salle_mang_122.htm] inflict unique pieces of furniture, integral section of the building.

In case a easily of weak suitable for Victor Horta is a data like abstracted of his function (except in the late lesson of the Mezzara hotel [http://nakano.main.jp/misc/guimard/mezzara/153019.jpg], inside 1910), Guimard undertakes astonishing space experiments notwithstanding, in a volumetry of his constructions particularly : the Coilliot home [http://lartnouveau.com/artistes/guimard/maison_coilliot.htm] & its upsetting double-frontage (1898), La Bluette [http://lartnouveau.com/artistes/guimard/pavillons/villa_bluette.htm] & its beautiful volumetrical harmony (1898), and especially a Castel Henriette [http://www.lecercleguimard.com/accueil.html] (1899) & a Castel d’Orgeval [http://aplressources.free.fr/GUIMARDOC/5t.html] (1905), radical demonstrations of an vigorous & crooked "free plan", twenty-xxv years prior to a theories of Le Corbusier. Symmetry is but non proscribed : a splendid Nozal hotel [http://lartnouveau.com/artistes/guimard/documents/hotel_nozal.htm], withwithin 1905, utilizes the rational disposition of a project in square projected by Viollet-le-Duc.

A structural innovations don't miss either, when in the extraordinary concert hall Humbert-de-Romans [http://www.lecercleguimard.com/maj/projetexpo.htm] (1901), in which a complex frame splits a acoustic wave to lead to ha single acoustics ; or even when in a hotel Guimard (1909), in which the narrowness of the ground makes it conceivable to the designer to reject any carrying work on the external bulwarks & so to release the interior spaces arrangement, different from either one floor to an additional [http://lartnouveau.com/documents/wiki/guimard/hotel_guimard_1er_et.jpg]; etc.

Curious & imaginative spirit, Guimard is likewise the precursor of the industrial standardizatiin, insofar when he wishes to diffuse the freshly art on a big shell. Thereinside field he knows the rattling profits – in spite of the scandals – by having his far-famed entries of the Parisian Subway [http://www.parisinconnu.com/guimard/l2p1.htm], flexible constructions in which triumph a structural ornamentation principle of Viollet-le-Duc. the idea is taken higher – however using less profits – around 1907 using a catalogue of cast iron elements applicable to buildings : Artistic Cast Iron, Guimard Style [http://www.insecula.com/oeuvre/photo_ME0000053981.html].

When for a spherical architectural space, a intrinsical project of his objet d'art proceed of the equivalent ideal of formal continuity (which makes it conceivable to amalgamate all the practical functions within one person, when sustaining the Vase des Binelles [http://www.musee-adriendubouche.fr/pages/page_id18416_u1l2.htm], of 1903) & linear project, when in the drawing of its pieces of furniture [http://www.insecula.com/oeuvre/photo_ME0000053975.html], harmonious & lightly silhouetted.

His inimitable stylistic vocabulary proceeds of the particularly suggestive vegetable organicism, when remaining resolutely on the slope of abstraction. Flexible mouldings & neural movements invest stone also when wood ; in the deuce dimensions, Guimard creates confessedly abstract compositions which adapt sustaining equivalent ease to stained glass [http://nakano.main.jp/misc/guimard/mezzara/153357.jpg] (Mezzara hotel, 1910), to ceramics panel [http://lartnouveau.com/artistes/guimard/lille/coilliot/hall/coil4.htm] (Coilliot home, 1898), to wrought iron [http://www.stanries.com/cgi-bin/display.cgi?type=v&file=../images/g-gp-chstairs01.jpg] (Castel Henriette, 1899), to wallpaper [http://aplressources.free.fr/GUIMARDOC/5mi.html] (Castel Béranger, 1898) or even to fabric [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ho/11/euwf/hob_49.85.11.htm] (Guimard hotel, 1909).

Oblivion
However around spite of this pyrotechnic of innovations & various demonstrations, a click & a public come quickly diverted of Guimard : to a lesser degree a function, these are a human world health organization irritates. & as a worthy representant of Art Nouveau, it is itself victim of inherent contradictions of the ideals of the movement : his virtually all completed creations come financially unprocurable to the greatest total, & contrariwise his tries to standardization don’t square super easily its super household vocabulary. He is eventually totally forgotten once he dies inside Up to date York within 1942, in which a fear of the war got manufactured him become exiled (his married woman was Jewish).

The rediscovery
Afterward as well numerous destructions, any isolated explorers (a foremost "hectorologists") return a rediscovery of a creative person & his universe just about the years 1960-1970 & reconstitute its history with patience. In case a major a portion is liquidate this field, a fact is that, 100 years when a « magnificient gesture » of Art Nouveau (Le Corbusier), the majority of the buildings of Hector Guimard remainside untouchable to the public, & that the Guimard Museum is however non inaugurated in France.