9 Artists Who Defined Art Nouveau

Art Nouveau, literally translated from French as New Art, was an art movement that emerged during the industrial age, as a counter-reaction to the standardization of goods and products. Art Nouveau designs imitated natural forms and shapes and consisted of elaborate decorative elements. Sometimes Art Nouveau had a darker undertone—exploring death, decay, and desire. Read on to learn more about Art Nouveau artists who defined the aesthetic of the movement throughout Europe.

Alphonse Mucha was the undoubted leader of the Art Nouveau movement. His theatrical posters were so popular that Parisians stole them from the streets so that they could hang them at home. Mucha’s style remains instantly recognizable by his signature lettering, the abundance of details, and vertically oriented compositions, often of unusual proportions. Despite working in Paris, he often went back to his Slavic roots, incorporating folklore subjects into his work.

Despite his association with the movement, Mucha rejected the title of the father of Art Nouveau and, even more fervently, the name itself. He insisted that there could be no such thing as new art since all art essentially relied on the same principles and expressed the same ideals. For Mucha, a spiritual component of art dominated over all others. A devout Catholic and one of the leading Czech Freemasons, in 1899, he created an illustrated edition of the Lord’s Prayer, riddled with complex symbolism and allegories.

2. Aubrey Beardsley

Beardley’s professional career lasted only six years but he managed to gain a controversial reputation. His most famous and debated project was his collaboration with Oscar Wilde. The tragedy Salomé, adapted from the Biblical story of King Herod, his stepdaughter Salomé, and John the Baptist, explored the depths of desire, perversion, and violence. The provocative and occasionally explicit imagery of Beardsley was partially inspired by Japanese art, particularly shunga, a genre of woodblock printed erotic illustration. The decadent aestheticism mixing desire with repulsion became a trademark of Aubrey Beardsley’s art, earning him a controversial reputation amongst the conservative public.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec depicted the bohemian life of Paris and its marginalized inhabitants—dancers, sex workers, and penniless creatives. Despite feeling welcome in these circles, he came from an aristocratic family and had a highly privileged childhood. His deliberate self-expulsion from the higher classes could be a result of ill health. As a teenager, he fractured both his legs, which due to his birth defects (probably caused by family inbreeding) never healed properly and seized growth. Toulouse-Lautrec’s disability allowed him to spend more time practicing art. Feeling alienated from high society, he found comfort in the circles of lower-class performers and artists.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s biggest contribution to Art Nouveau was the series of posters painted for the famous Moulin Rouge nightclub. A frequent party guest himself, the artist captured the decadent, loud, and chaotic beauty of cabaret and its performers and visitors. Unwittingly, he observed the development of a new social class that had enough income for leisure and entertainment but had no class privilege.

4. Gustave Moreau

Although Gustave Moreau as an artist is usually named a Symbolist, his complex imagery and elaborate decor left a great impact on the Art Nouveau aesthetic. Unlike other artists on this list, Moreau was almost universally liked and even won awards at the conservative art salons. His mythological scenes had little experimentation with painting style but developed the visual vocabulary of several art movements that emerged after his death. Moreau explored the beauty of destruction, desire, and intense emotion, all encapsulated in solemn and static environments of fantastic castles and imaginary realms.

Unlike many artists of his era, Moreau was reclusive and self-contained. He had little contact with the outside world, preferring to be completely immersed in his imaginary scenes. Towards his late years, he withdrew from public exhibitions and allowed only a limited few of close friends to visit him in his studio. Gustave Moreau’s fixation on dreams and lack of interest in the real world is evident in his rendering of human figures. Although highly detailed and decorated, Moreau’s heroes, seductresses, and gods are static and show no recognizable emotion that could evoke empathy.

The Danish illustrator Gerda Wegener had a prolific career, working in both Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. She was also the wife of Lili Elbe, one of the first transgender women to receive gender-affirming surgery. After the public outing of Lili, the couple had to flee Copenhagen and settle in Paris, which was much more forgiving towards its inhabitants.

Gerda Wegener mostly worked with fashion illustration and erotica, in both cases often challenging the gender norms of her time. The body types of her figures varied from the normative standards, with masculine or feminine features unrelated to the biological sex of her models. Wegener’s art offered a glimpse into queer femininity, comfortably placed within the limits of acceptable cultural trends.

6. Charles Rennie Mackintosh

The Scottish designer and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh was one of the brightest minds of the British Art Nouveau, who developed an instantly recognizable style. Unlike his many colleagues, Mackintosh’s Art Nouveau style had little to no floral decoration, instead relying on abstract organic and geometric forms. Among the most significant projects for Mackintosh were his architectural designs. He criticized European architecture for over-quotations from its earlier history and tried to find new sources of inspiration. Particularly important for him was the simplicity and functionality of Japanese architecture. Unlike many other Modernist architects, Mackintosh insisted that functionality should not be constructed at the expense of design.

7. Jan Toorop

Dutch artist of Indonesian origins Jan Toorop moved to the Netherlands in his early teens and studied art in Delft and Amsterdam. Toorop was a devoted proponent of Symbolism and Art Nouveau but mixed these styles with Indonesian traditional art and imagery. Over his long career, he worked in different styles, incorporating elements of Impressionism and even Divisionism into his works.

Although Jan Toorop gets relatively few mentions in the media, his art had a tremendous impact on the early artistic periods of Piet Mondrian and the Art Nouveau aesthetic of Gustave Klimt. Toorop was an influential and well-liked artist who contributed to the Dutch art scene not only by experimenting with his style but also by organizing artists’ colonies and creative communities.

Just like Gustave Moreau and Jan Toorop on this list, Franz von Stuck is usually labeled as a Symbolist, despite his obvious impact on the Art Nouveau design. In his paintings, von Stuck explored European myths and feminine characters, often with a misogynistic undertone of corruption and perversion. Among the most significant features of Franz von Stuck’s art was his design of signed frames decorated with columns and ornaments to fit every painting. However, von Stuck’s main Art Nouveau masterpiece was his own house in Munich, built in 1898. The artist decorated the entire interior with ornaments, sculptures, friezes, and mosaics, blending contemporary influences with references to Roman Antiquity.

9. Gustav Klimt: The Legend of Art Nouveau

The Austrian artist Gustav Klimt hardly needs an introduction, since he is one of the most famous and popular artists of all time. He was the mentor of Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka and claimed there were only two artists in the entire world—him and Diego Velazquez. Klimt’s tumultuous personal life is just as famous as his paintings with dozens of theories suggesting his romantic involvement with his models, who were usually married Viennese women of high status. Klimt’s Golden Paintings became the embodiment of Art Nouveau, with references to Byzantine art, the Arts and Crafts movement, and Ancient Egypt. Present-day art historians also believe that some motifs found in Gustav Klimt’s paintings could relate to the scientific discoveries of his era—particularly the studies of cell structure.