Summary
Partaking in the Art Nouveau trends elsewhere in Europe, Jugendstil in Germany revolutionized and popularized modern design and crafts at the turn of the 20th century. The term Jugendstil, meaning "Young Style," was derived from the magazine Die Jugend, and the style tended toward floral motifs, arabesques, and organically inspired lines and eventually moved toward abstraction and functionalism. Importantly, it emphasized workshops, where groups of designers worked with industrialists for mass production to disseminate products.
Jugendstil would become an important touchstone for Expressionists in Germany and Austria who were creating new visions of the modern subject and urban centers as well as later Bauhaus experiments in combining fine and applied arts.
Key Ideas
Most Important Art
Leather Screen (1887)
Christansen had diverse training, working as a decorative painter and in an interior design shop, studying in Italy and at the Academie Julian in Paris. Influenced by the Nabis, he felt art was a synthesis of nature expressed in personal symbols. At the same time, the artist was increasingly interested in artisan crafts, particularly textiles and graphic design, all of which employed his hallmark bright color.
Andromeda (1898)
Christiansen's use of color and his hand-letter fonts were distinctive additions to Jugendstil, and his images, frequently depicting beautiful women, often appeared in Die Jugend. An early member of the Darmstadt Art Colony, he was known for his versatility, as he worked in a wide variety of applied arts, saying, "I take my work as an artist as general as possible."
Der Kuss (The Kiss) (1898)
Behrens' image reflects the influence of Symbolism, as seen in Edvard Munch's painting The Kiss (1897), but rather than reflecting that work's emotional ambivalence, described by art historian Reinhold Heller as conveying a "loss of individuality, a loss of one's own existence and identity," this image creates feeling of oneness. The figures become androgynous, and the curving lines of their eyebrows, chins, and lips flow into one another. The image moves away from representation by depicting the lovers as disembodied heads and emphasizes the pure flat pattern. Behrens' work also reflected the continuing tradition of the woodcut, a distinctive element of German art dating back to the Renaissance, which raised graphic art to the level of fine art. Appearing in a 1898 issue of Pan, the image pioneered a central motif of Jugendstil that became influential outside of Germany, as seen in the Austrian Gustav Klimt's painting The Kiss (1907-08).
Chair (c. 1898-1890)
A leading pioneer of Raumkunst ("room art"), the artist exhibited this chair as part of his Music Room exhibition for the Munich United Workshops at the 1899 Dresden German Art Exhibition. The chair was so popular that it was immediately put into commercial production. He exhibited a similar chair at the Paris International Exhibition of 1900, and department stores and commercial firms bought up the chair; a number of them, including Liberty's in London, went on to make their own version.
The German art reformer Hermann Muthesius saw Riemerschmid's interiors as a modern German "art of the people," at the same time his emphasis on functionality made him an important modernist influence.
Armchair (1900)
Paul was originally trained as a painter but quickly turned to the applied arts and helped found the United Workshops for Art in Craftwork, where he designed this chair as part of his hunting lodge interior. He exhibited the Hunter's Room (1900) in the "Fixtures of public buildings and houses" category at the 1900 Universal Exhibition of Paris where it was awarded a gold medal. He became an influential interior designer, reaching an American audience with his exhibition at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, where he won another gold medal. He obtained the patronage of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1906, leading to his being appointed director of the Unterrichtsanstalt des königlichen Kunstgewerbe-Museums (Educational Institution of the Royal Museum of Applied Arts) in Berlin.
Hackesche Höfe (1906)
The architect Berndt designed the complex, and Endell designed the richly polychrome facades, entrances, and exteriors. The complex innovatively broke with traditional German courtyards by clearly separating residential areas, shops devoted to trade and craft, and entertainment venues. Following the creation of this courtyard complex, Endell designed the Theater Bunte (1901) in Berlin. Its name "Bunte" means color, and Endell created the fabrics, carpets, tiles, and even the nails used to construct the building. Renovated after World War II, the Hackesche Höfe, containing artisan shops, dining venues, and theatres, and devoid of commercial chains, continues to be one of the most popular destinations in Berlin, attracting tourists and locals alike with its artistic ambiance.
Hochzeitsturm (The Wedding Tower) (1907/1908)
The interior of the building has seven levels and includes mosaics by Friedrich Wilhelm Kleubens, frescos by Ph. O. Schäfer, and decorative figures from Heinrich Jobst. The tower commemorates the second marriage of Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse, the founder of the art colony, to Princess Eleonore Solms-Hohensolms-Lich in 1905. Olbrich timed the opening of the building for a 1908 exhibition and intended it to be the crowning, emblematic work of the community as a gesamtkunstwerk. The clean geometric design of the building, combined with the stepped effect of the top third, was an early prefiguring of Art Deco.
In 1914 two clocks representing the unification of the old and the new were added to the tower. A square sundial, designed by Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens, on the south façade was surrounded by a blue mosaic with gold stars and the twelve zodiac signs and depicted the sun in the center of a white background with hour lines in black. A mechanical clock, using gold leaf and symbols representing faith, hope, and love, was added to the north façade.
Today, the Mathildenhöhe Institute, an organization for promoting contemporary art and culture, is housed in the building. In 2015 the entire Darmstadt Art Colony, including the tower, was named a World Heritage site by UNESCO. Officials explained, "the total artwork of the Darmstadt Artists' Colony...with its buildings, gardens and works of art spanning the years 1901-1914, constitutes not only a unique ensemble testifying to experimental creativity, but also an incomparable document of the architectural and artistic renewal at the dawn of Modernism inspired by the international reform movement of the early 20th century."
Krupp fountain (c. 1910-12)
Obrist's work declined in popularity as Jugendstil moved toward an aesthetic geared to mass production, yet the fountain was praised by Henry van de Velde as having created "something from nothing" that was, simultaneously, an "inspiring manifestation of life," embodied in "this budding and effervescing mass of stone" with its "sequence of gestures directing the water's course." Standing a little over twenty feet tall, the fountain was paired with Obrist's Movement, an equally tall fountain created as a swirling spire, in the courtyard of the House of Arts and Crafts in Munich in 1912, though both works were subsequently lost.
The artist's innovations included not only abstract and biomorphic motifs but also explorations of new sculptural materials including plasticine and concrete. His work had a profound influence on the subsequent generation of the Expressionists, and has recently received contemporary interest with major exhibitions in Switzerland, Munich, and the United Kingdom. As the catalogue for the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich states, "Obrist created the first abstract sculptures that developed a language of their own through the interaction of the organic and inorganic structures."