Art Nouveau: When the architecture was dressed in spring
Before the green walls, an architectural current wanted to capture through its elements, the wonders of nature.
The ornament in architecture has played, almost from its beginnings, a fundamental role. Its presence, its aesthetic and formal quality and even its absence, have contributed to situate, frame and explain the architecture in a moment and a space. This is the case of the Art Nouveau movement, whose development took place mainly in the field of decorative arts between 1894 and 1910.
The Art Nouveau − considered by some art historians as an ornamental style −, reacted against the academicism and eclecticism of the nineteenth century. This current sought sources of inspiration in nature, hence its decorative elegance and sensory qualities.
To say of Dr. Enrique X. De Anda, the great themes that were addressed by artists, artisans and architects of Art Nouveau were women and nature with all its symbolic charge "… the image of nature in its phase of revival, spring, SAP circulating and Vivifi CA, and that gives rise to an image of eternal youth. "
The reasons related to the nature mentioned were mainly: vegetables – stems representing young plants and flowers −; Representations of the ephemeral – dragonflies, butterflies, plant buttons −; Clouds, smoke and the Marine world – flora, foam and exotic fauna such as octopuses, eels, crabs and hypofields −; among others.
In Mexico Art Nouveau came during the last decade of the nineteenth century thanks to the interest that had artists and intellectuals to know and adopt the current developments in Central Europe. Among the most outstanding examples of this style in Mexico City are: the interiors of the Mercantile Center (today Gran Hotel in Mexico City); The main and lateral entrance, the blacksmith and the windows of the lower part of the Palace of Fine Arts; The lobby floor and the staircase of the Geology Museum; Decorative elements on the facades and stained glass of the Iron Palace in the historic center of Mexico City; The facades of the house Prunes in the street of Chihuahua 78, and that of the building Guanajuato 54 – which currently has a coffee on the ground floor − in the Colonia Roma; As well as the house located in General Prim 39 in the Juarez colony.
By laureate Martínez