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After the Armistice of 1918 in an anaemic Europe, the victorious nations resent an enormous relief: humiliated, dismembered, deprived of her colonial empire, Germany is far from rising her head again.

During the war, in Paris, people had not lost the art of enjoying them-selves: in the beginning, the Parisians had a good time in order to jeer at the enemy and to take heart, and later on, to amuse the soldiers on leave. In the end, when the poilus had lived through too many horrors and were no longer prone to laugh, amusements went on to comfort the shirkers enriching themselves under the staring looks of those who survived. And now, when a new generation dreams of a new world and proclaims “Never again such a war!”, young people are carried away by new musical styles imported from America by the Allies: jazz makes its appearance.

The positivist utopia of the 19th century and its progressivistic credo make place to an unchained, extravagant individualism.

André Gide’s and Marcel Proust’s novels set this trend which is exacerbated and increased by the dada movement and its manifest published by Tristan Tzara.

André Breton’s surrealism will soon follow. Modern Style, which had a good start, has been brought down by the war and now gives way to precious Art déco designs.

And one Thursday in 1929, the Wall Street bell announces the end of the rejoicings. Several artistic events triggered major changes in decorative arts, particularly with regard to furniture: Serge Dyaghilev’s Russian ballets, fauvism, cubism, and Negro art.

From 1920 to 1939, and as a reaction to the Modern Style in vogue before World War One, Art déco was an extremely influent artistic movement especially in architecture and design, but was in fact more or less related to all forms of plastic arts.

The Art déco style got its name from the Exposition internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels modernes which took place in Paris in 1925.

In the 1920’s, the Art déco period is directly linked to the garçonne (bachelor girl), a term that designates women’s emancipation which ranks women higher than men. The word stems from the homonymic novel by Victor Margueritte. The finest representations of the garçonne are Suzanne Lenglen (tennis), Louise Brooks (cinema), Tamara de Lempicka (painter) and also Joséphine Baker (black dancer)… The fashion of that period totally expresses this liberation by proposing short-haired mannequins, short and light dresses to be worn without a corset. You will find exactly these elegant silhouettes painted on the vases presented by this site.

After a period of lucky days during the twenties, this trend gradually dwindles away towards the end of the thirties and is progressively replaced by the increasing influence of the Bauhaus, or rather International Style, which achieves the Art déco artists’ dream, i.e. series production: This is the birth of the consumer society such as we know it – ‘beautiful’ at the lowest possible price.