Art deco is an art movement that was popular in the 1920s and 1930s. It consists of geometric shapes in architecture, furniture and decorative art. An example of this is the design on the Chrysler skyscraper in New York.

Aleksandra Ekster

Born 1882 and died 1949, Aleksandra Ekster was an internationally acclaimed Russian painter who painted buildings, but more often women in dresses. She was also a costume designer, which can be very obviously seen in her work. Her paintings are always very bright, with multicolour rectangular shapes, as was popular in the art deco movement. She used acrylic paint in almost all of her paintings.

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The figures in her paintings are always very flamboyant, with very extravagant dresses, which makes these paintings feel very fun and lively. The use of acute geometric shapes gives her paintings an almost abstract feel. From looking at the unique, creative design of the dresses in her paintings, you can tell that she had a lot of fun being a costume designer.

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Titled “City”, you can very clearly see that she was very inspired by the Cubism art movement. Whilst in Paris, she met the cubist painters Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who probably played a big part in inspiring the prevalent elements of cubism in her works.

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When she wasn’t painting women and buildings, she also painted just pure abstract cubism. All of her work is so full of colour and alive, I’m sure that she loved making her work.

I like her artwork, I like looking at the bright, colourful geometric shapes of the glamourous figures.

She seems to have painted the most in the 1910s. Some of the major events in this time were the titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912, and World War 1 which lasted between 1914 and 1918.

Erté

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Romain de Tirtoff, more commonly known by his pseudonym Erté, alive between 1892 and 1990. He was a French-Russian artist and designer in an array of fields, including fashion, jewellery, graphic arts, costume and set design for film, theatre, and opera, and interior decor. Over the course of his lifetime, he said that he had created over 17,000 artworks.

Some of the major events around the time that he was making art were; World War 1 (1914 – 1918), World War 2 (1939 – 1945), and The Vietnam War (1955 – 1975).

His paintings are all very clean and have a distinct style. He mostly painted women in serene dresses and situations who always looked very elegant. His paintings were very detailed and complicated. He mostly painted with acrylics and pastels.

His most famous work is Symphony in Black (pictured above). It has been reproduced countless times.

His bronze sculptures were no different from his paintings, as they also depicted very elegant women dressed in complicated, glamorous clothing. He was also inspired by Asian culture and clothing, which is evident in his work

Whilst staying in Paris, Erte met the author and illustrator Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley’s clean, sophisticated art style obviously had an impact on the way Erte painted and sculpted. Below are some of Beardsley’s drawings.

I like Erte’s work, everything is very clean, precise and colourful. It has a certain sophisticated elegance to it. It is very cool.

Jose De Almada Negreiros

Alive between 1893 and 1970, Almada was a Portuguese artist and writer. Besides literature and painting, Almada developed ballet choreographies and worked on tapestry, engraving, murals, caricature, mosaic, azulejo and stained glass.

His works range from relatively realistic to very abstract paintings of people. He used bright, lively colours that somehow harmoniously work with each other. Sometimes he would use an analogous colour palette, and other times he would use a complementary colour palette. He worked with oils and acrylics. He was very influenced by futurism and expressionism. He was also influenced by the artist and writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

Some of the major historical events around the time of his work were; World War 1 (1914 – 1918), World War 2 (1939 – 1945), and The Vietnam War (1955 – 1975), and the titanic sailing off, but unfortunately sinking in 1912.

I like his work, it portrays normal people doing normal things, like a mother caring for her baby, a man in a cafe, and a fisherman fishing. The other artists that I have looked at in the art deco movent both tended to paint glamorous women in luxurious clothing, but Almada seemed to have been very down to earth, and compassionate about the everyday person. His work is very human.

My opinion on art deco as a movement, is that the paintings and sculptures are pretty visually appealing, but it is far from the kind of art that I like; I prefer art that is much more experimental and that explores darker subjects.