Into the Twenties: style and design 1909-1929
Author: Giulia Veronesi
Publisher: Thames and Hudson, London, 1968
Originally published as Stile 1925. Florence, Vallecchi, 1966.
367 pages, 246 black and white plates, 10 colour plates
Hardback, good condition overall for a book from 1968. Protected by a clear plastic book jacket.
Ex-library book but seems to have hardly been borrowed.
This book is the first serious study of the decorative arts (Art Deco) during the period which saw probably the last great flowering of decoration for its own sake. During these years the world acclaimed Diaghilev's Russian Ballet; Paul Poiret dressed the rich; Cocteau led every avant-garde fashion; Fitzgerald documented the American 'lost generation'. The turning-point was reached with the Exhibition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs in 1923 — the zenith of elaboration in twentieth-century style and design and the moment when a totally different spirit, which had long been growing, at last began to prevail. For, as early as 1907, the pioneers of the Deutscher Werkbund had begun to link design with modern mass-production methods; Walter Gropius, with similar ideals, founded the Bauhaus in 1919; finally, at the Exposition of 1925, Le Corbusier revolutionized traditional conceptions of domestic architecture and furniture with his austerely Esprit Nouveau pavilion. These were some of the men, and the most important movements, that eventually banished the decorative luxuriance which was the legacy of Art Nouveau, and established the purist International Style which was hence forth to dominate architecture and the applied arts.
Giulia Veronesi has made an intensive study of the art of the period and has contributed many articles to specialist journals. She traces the complex history of the conflicting trends from Beardsley and Klimt to the aftermath of the Exposition. Her survey is illustrated by a fascinating wealth of material, much of which has hitherto been extremely difficult of access and is now reproduced for the first time.