Art Deco was an international decorative style that ran from about 1910 to 1940, combining streamlined geometry, luxurious materials and motifs drawn from ancient Egypt, sub-Saharan Africa and the machine age. It touched architecture, furniture, jewellery, ceramics, graphic design, fashion and painting, providing a unified visual language for the inter-war consumer economy. The Chrysler Building (1930) and the interiors of the ocean liner Normandie (1935) are its grandest statements.

When did Art Deco start?

The style took shape in Paris around 1910 among designers such as Paul Iribe and Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, and was codified at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which gave the movement its name. The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 pushed it into a sleeker, more austere second phase often called Streamline Moderne. The Second World War ended large-scale production.

Who are the most famous Art Deco artists?

Tamara de Lempicka is the style's best-known painter, working in Paris from 1923. Jean Dupas, Georges Lepape and Erté (Romain de Tirtoff) produced definitive Deco graphic work. René Lalique set the standard in glass, Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann in furniture, and Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels in jewellery. The architects William Van Alen (Chrysler Building) and Donald Deskey gave New York its signature Deco skyline.

What defines the Art Deco style?

Art Deco relies on bold geometric shapes, especially stepped forms, zigzags and sunbursts; luxurious materials such as lacquer, ebony, ivory, silver leaf and exotic woods; stylised figurative motifs drawn from ancient Egypt after Tutankhamun's 1922 tomb discovery; and a clean symmetry that set it apart from the flowing asymmetry of Art Nouveau that preceded it. Typography was streamlined into flat geometric letterforms.

What is the difference between Art Deco and Art Nouveau?

Art Nouveau (c. 1890 to 1910) drew its forms from nature, using flowing curves, plant tendrils, peacock feathers and the female figure as a moving line. Art Deco (c. 1910 to 1940) replaced those organic curves with disciplined geometry, stepped pyramids, zigzags and symmetrical fans. Deco also embraced industrial materials such as chrome, stainless steel and Bakelite that Art Nouveau designers had typically avoided.

Why was Art Deco so popular?

Deco offered a visual language that felt modern without being austere, and luxurious without being old-fashioned. It could be scaled from mass-produced cinema posters to bespoke ocean-liner interiors, which suited both the new consumer economy and the surviving aristocratic clientele. Hollywood adopted it wholesale in the 1930s, spreading the style worldwide through film, and municipal authorities used it for public buildings to signal civic progress.

Where can I see the best Art Deco paintings?

Tamara de Lempicka canvases are held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Lentos Kunstmuseum in Linz and in significant private collections. For the style across all media, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Brooklyn Museum in New York offer the essential public surveys. Miami Beach's Art Deco District preserves the largest concentration of Streamline architecture in situ.

Design for folding chair in wood, c.1935-39 by Eileen Gray

Design for extending wardrobe, Tempe a Pailla by Eileen Gray

The Orphans oder The Boarding School at Nemours by Bernard Boutet de Monvel

In the desert of Afghanistan by Alexandre Jacovleff

Advertisement for The Arrow Collar Man by J. C. Leyendecker

Les Trois Robes Neuves (06/1913) by Georges Lepape

Trois robes neuves (June 1913) by Georges Lepape

Delfina devant le berceau de Sylvie by Bernard Boutet de Monvel

Cocktail dress (late 1950s) by Edward Molyneux

Combinaisons ornementales se multipliant à l'infini à l'aide du miroir (1900?) by M.P. Verneuil

Art Deco

23 artists · 1920–1940

Art Deco^[4] crystallised in Paris during the 1920s and spread rapidly across architecture, fashion, graphic design, and the decorative arts. The style drew on geometric abstraction, machine-age optimism, and luxury craftsmanship in equal measure. Its visual language, sharp angles, stepped forms, sunburst motifs, and streamlined curves, appeared on everything from skyscrapers to cocktail shakers. Tamara de Lempicka [9]'s paintings captured the era's glamour through a fusion of Cubist geometry and neoclassical polish. George Barbier's fashion illustrations defined the style's elegance on paper. Leonetto Cappiello's advertising posters brought its bold graphic energy to the street. Saul Bass, working decades later, carried Art Deco's principles of bold simplification and geometric clarity into mid-century film design. The 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris gave the movement its name and its global platform. Art Deco celebrated modernity, speed, and material luxury. It was the first truly international decorative style of the twentieth century, equally at home in Manhattan, Mumbai, and Shanghai.

Key Ideas

Geometry Meets Glamour

Art Deco translated the angular forms of Cubism and the dynamic energy of Futurism into a decorative vocabulary accessible to a broad public. Zigzag patterns, chevrons, and sunburst motifs appeared on buildings, textiles, jewellery, and poster designs. The style valued precision and clarity over organic flow. Tamara de Lempicka's portraits applied these geometric principles to the human body, rendering flesh in faceted planes that made her subjects look sculpted from polished stone. The result was an aesthetic that felt modern without being austere.
The Machine as Muse

Automobiles, ocean liners, aeroplanes, and skyscrapers provided Art Deco with its primary metaphors. Streamlining, the practice of shaping objects to reduce air resistance, became a design principle applied to everything from locomotives to toasters. The style celebrated industrial production rather than resisting it. Chrome, glass, Bakelite, and reinforced concrete joined traditional luxury materials like lacquer, ivory, and exotic woods. This embrace of the machine age distinguished Art Deco from the handcraft ethos of its predecessor, Art Nouveau.
Global Reach

Art Deco spread faster and further than any previous decorative style. The Chrysler Building and Rockefeller Center brought it to New York. The Palais de Chaillot and Théâtre des Champs-Élysées anchored it in Paris. Marine Drive in Mumbai, the Peace Hotel in Shanghai, and Napier's rebuilt town centre in New Zealand all adopted its forms. This global reach was driven by cinema, magazines, and international exhibitions. Art Deco was the first style of the modern media age, designed to photograph well and reproduce clearly in print.

Key Artists

Tamara de Lempicka

1898–1980 · Russian

J. C. Leyendecker

1874–1951 · American

Saul Bass

1920–1996 · American

George Barbier

1882–1932 · French

Leonetto Cappiello

1875–1942 · French

Georges Lepape

1887–1971 · French

Bernard Boutet de Monvel

1881–1949 · French

Edward Molyneux

1891–1974 · British

Progression of Art

Landmark works that shaped the movement.

La Belle Dame sans Merci (illustration)

George Barbier · 1921 · Pochoir print

Barbier was among the most prolific and accomplished of the French fashion illustrators who defined the Art Deco graphic style. His pochoir (stencil) prints used flat, layered colours and precise outlines to create images of extraordinary elegance. This plate, drawn for a luxury edition, shows a woman in a flowing gown set against a stylised garden. The composition balances symmetry with decorative abundance. Barbier's line is sharp and confident, reducing the human figure to a series of graceful curves contained within geometric borders. His work bridged fine art and commercial illustration, establishing a visual standard for 1920s fashion publishing that influenced magazine design for decades.

Cachou Lajaunie (poster)

Leonetto Cappiello · 1920 · Colour lithograph

Cappiello is often called the father of modern advertising. His posters abandoned the detailed, text-heavy compositions of nineteenth-century commercial art in favour of a single bold image against a dark background. The Cachou Lajaunie poster uses a vivid figure set against black, creating an image that could be read instantly from across a busy street. Cappiello's technique, flat colour, strong silhouette, and minimal text, anticipated the graphic principles of Art Deco and influenced a generation of poster designers. His work proved that commercial art could achieve the visual impact of gallery painting.

Origins

Paris 1925: The Exhibition That Named a Style

The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes opened in Paris in April 1925, occupying both banks of the Seine. Twenty-one countries contributed pavilions displaying furniture, textiles, ceramics, jewellery, and architectural models. Germany was not invited, and the United States declined to participate, claiming it had no modern decorative art to show. The exhibition gave its name to a style that had been developing since before the war. The pavilions of the French luxury houses, including Lalique, Ruhlmann, and Süe et Mare, set the standard: expensive materials, geometric forms, and machine-age motifs applied with handcraft precision.

From Craft to Industry

Art Deco began as a luxury style for wealthy Parisian patrons, but the economics of the 1930s pushed it toward mass production. The streamlined variant that emerged in the United States adapted Art Deco's geometric vocabulary to factory-made goods: radios, refrigerators, automobiles, and office buildings. Industrial designers like Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes applied aerodynamic curves to products that would never move at speed. This democratisation of Art Deco's forms gave the style its widest reach, even as purists argued that mass production diluted the craftsmanship that had defined the movement's origins.

Cinema and the Deco Imagination

Hollywood adopted Art Deco as its house style during the 1930s. Set designers like Cedric Gibbons and Van Nest Polglase created interiors of polished chrome, white lacquer, and geometric pattern for films starring Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, and Jean Harlow. These sets reached audiences of millions, making Art Deco the visual language of modern sophistication for an entire generation. The style's photogenic qualities, its sharp contrasts and reflective surfaces, made it ideal for black-and-white cinematography. Cinema did more to globalise Art Deco than any exhibition or publication.

In Their Words

“My goal is never to copy but to create a new style with bright luminous colours and to detect the elegance in my models.”

Tamara de Lempicka, Quoted in Gioia Mori, Tamara de Lempicka: Paris 1920-1938, 1994

“There are no miracles. There is only what you make.”

Tamara de Lempicka, Quoted in Laura Claridge, Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence, 1999

“Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.”

Saul Bass, AIGA lecture, 1996

All Art Deco Artists

16 artists.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Art Deco?
Art Deco^[4] was an international decorative style that ran from about 1910 to 1940, combining streamlined geometry, luxurious materials and motifs drawn from ancient Egypt, sub-Saharan Africa and the machine age. It touched architecture, furniture, jewellery, ceramics, graphic design, fashion and painting, providing a unified visual language for the inter-war consumer economy. The Chrysler Building (1930) and the interiors of the ocean liner Normandie (1935) are its grandest statements.
When did Art Deco start?
The style took shape in Paris around 1910 among designers such as Paul Iribe and Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, and was codified at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, which gave the movement its name. The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 pushed it into a sleeker, more austere second phase often called Streamline Moderne. The Second World War ended large-scale production.
Who are the most famous Art Deco artists?
Tamara de Lempicka^[9] is the style's best-known painter, working in Paris from 1923. Jean Dupas, Georges Lepape and Erté (Romain de Tirtoff) produced definitive Deco graphic work. René Lalique set the standard in glass, Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann in furniture, and Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels in jewellery. The architects William Van Alen (Chrysler Building) and Donald Deskey gave New York its signature Deco skyline.
What defines the Art Deco style?
Art Deco^[4] relies on bold geometric shapes, especially stepped forms, zigzags and sunbursts; luxurious materials such as lacquer, ebony, ivory, silver leaf and exotic woods; stylised figurative motifs drawn from ancient Egypt after Tutankhamun's 1922 tomb discovery; and a clean symmetry that set it apart from the flowing asymmetry of Art Nouveau that preceded it. Typography was streamlined into flat geometric letterforms.
What is the difference between Art Deco and Art Nouveau?
Art Nouveau (c. 1890 to 1910) drew its forms from nature, using flowing curves, plant tendrils, peacock feathers and the female figure as a moving line. Art Deco^[4] (c. 1910 to 1940) replaced those organic curves with disciplined geometry, stepped pyramids, zigzags and symmetrical fans. Deco also embraced industrial materials such as chrome, stainless steel and Bakelite that Art Nouveau designers had typically avoided.
Why was Art Deco so popular?
Deco offered a visual language that felt modern without being austere, and luxurious without being old-fashioned. It could be scaled from mass-produced cinema posters to bespoke ocean-liner interiors, which suited both the new consumer economy and the surviving aristocratic clientele. Hollywood adopted it wholesale in the 1930s, spreading the style worldwide through film, and municipal authorities used it for public buildings to signal civic progress.
Where can I see the best Art Deco paintings?
Tamara de Lempicka^[9] canvases are held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Lentos Kunstmuseum in Linz and in significant private collections. For the style across all media, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Brooklyn Museum in New York offer the essential public surveys. Miami Beach's Art Deco^[4] District preserves the largest concentration of Streamline architecture in situ.

Sources

Art Deco editorial draws on the following published scholarship.

[1] book Alastair Duncan, Art Deco: The Visual Encyclopedia, 2009 Used for: biography, stylistic analysis.
[2] book Laura Claridge, Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence, 1999 Used for: biography, exhibition history, political views, stylistic analysis.
[3] book Charlotte Benton, Tim Benton, and Ghislaine Wood, Art Deco 1910-1939, 2003 Used for: exhibition history, notable works, stylistic analysis.
[4] wikipedia Wikipedia: Art Deco Used for: biography.
[5] book Nia Gould, A History of Art in 21 Cats Used for: biography.
[6] book Miller, Judith, 1951-, Art deco Used for: biography.
[7] book Judith Miller, DK Collector's Guides: Art Deco Used for: biography.
[8] book Hodge, Susie, 1960- author, The short story of women artists : a pocket guide to movements, works, breakthroughs, & themes Used for: biography.
[9] wikipedia Wikipedia: Tamara de Lempicka Used for: biography.
[10] wikipedia Wikipedia: Arman Manookian Used for: biography.
[11] wikipedia Wikipedia: Clarice Cliff Used for: biography.

Editorial overseen by Solis Prints. Sources verified 2026-05-30. Click a source for details, or hover over [N] in the page above to preview.

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Art Deco

Key Ideas

Geometry Meets Glamour

The Machine as Muse

Global Reach