Guide to French Art Deco

Art Deco swimming pool turned museum in Roubaix, northern France

Author and art/architectural historian Rosalind Ormiston looks back at 100 years of Art Deco style in France in her petite guide to French Art Deco.

In 2025, Paris celebrated the centenary of a remarkable exposition that happened in the city 100 years before, from April to October 1925. Sixteen million people attended the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts). Countries worldwide exhibited their latest designs at the vast expo, which would again consolidate France as capital of the arts post-war 1918, leaving the historicism of late nineteenth-century design behind.

Art Deco

The collective term Arts Decoratifs was later shortened to ‘Art Deco’, during its style revival in the 1960s. The name would symbolise wealth and glamour, a stylish concept translated into fashions, textiles, jewellery and cars, furniture, room interiors, and clean, geometric lines in architecture. Sculpture too became more noticeable, particularly sculptural reliefs integrated into building design.

Art Deco heralded modernity

The origins of Art Deco emerged around 1909-10. The turn of the century Art Nouveau movement was lessening its design appeal. In the first decade new art and design forms had emerged including Futurism, Fauvism, and Cubism, widening public perception of what art and design could be.

In Paris in 1909, the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev (1872 – 1929) launched the Ballet Russes, introducing the excitement of Igor Stravinsky’s music and bejewelled costumes by Léon Bakst (1866-1924). It instigated a design revolution. In France, to capitalise on art and design innovation, it was decided to have an international exhibition. It would promote international design and the best French designers, such as the interior designer and textile giant, Émile-Jaques Ruhlmann (1879-1933), and Paul Poiret (1879-1944), a master couturier.

Plans were in progress until the onset of war in Europe in 1914. The idea was revived in 1925, and by this time the ‘Art décoratif’ style had established itself. The vast show in Paris – its grounds stretching from the Louvre to the Eiffel Tower, would consolidate the Art Deco concept of geometric, visually classical buildings with sculptural motifs. It would evolve to create streamlined cars and trains. It was the ‘Roaring Twenties,’ the Charleston dance was all the rage and hairstyles got shorter, as did dresses.

The organisers of this massive event stipulated that none of the exhibitors could show anything historical. It had to be a new design, whether for fashion, cars, art, furniture, wallpapers, or decorative art accessories like glass and jewellery. The underlying aesthetic was speed, movement and freedom. Architecture had to embrace postwar modernity too. Invitations were sent out and 34 countries were allocated areas to build their own show houses.

Where to find Art Deco in Paris

Folies Bergère Paris in a guide to French Art Deco — *Folies Bergère*

Today, where can one see Art Deco in Paris? Look out for the Folies Bergère building at 32 Rue Richer, 9^th arr. Soon after the exposition closed, Folies Bergère director Paul Derval refurbished the nineteenth-century Music Hall, creating an Art Deco building (1927-29) with a clean, classical look, decorated with gold sculptural reliefs of a dancing girl by French sculptor Maurice Picard (1886-1941). The façade implied a chic, fashionable location, the sculptural reliefs alluding to the pleasure to be found inside the building.

Other Art Deco buildings created in the 1920s included an investment bank, the Société Financière Française et Coloniale with a façade luxuriously decorated in coloured marbles and enamels, representing indigenous animals associated with the French colonies. It is at Rue Pasquier in the 9^th arrondissement. There are many others (Google ‘Art Deco buildings in Paris’). Department stores like La Samaritaine embraced Art Deco in the 1920’s. It was a decorative style with a design aesthetic that fitted so many buildings, from factories and power stations to private homes.

And, what of fashion and interior design? Visit the Musée des Art Décoratifs, in the Louvre Palace, a few metres from the Louvre museum. With more than 1.5 million works and artifacts which range from the middle ages to the present day, it’s one of the world’s largest collections of decorative arts – including an art deco section. Here you’ll find a range of artifacts including the bathroom, bedroom and boudoir of renowned couturier Jeanne Lanvin.

There is also an office-library designed by Pierre Chareau (1883-1950). He served his apprenticeship at the Paris-base of British company Waring and Gillow, and his designs for private apartments in the French Embassy at the 1925 International Exposition reveal the pared-back modernity of Art Deco style. It was shown in the Pavillion de la Société des Artistes Décorateurs. What the exposition confirmed was that the innovative skills of master craftsmen had not been lost in an industrial age.

Art Deco style flourished until the beginning of war in Europe in 1939. What must be added is that not all exhibitors at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes embraced luxury. The Swiss-born architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (1887-1965) known as ‘Le Corbusier’ chose to exhibit his Pavillon de L’ Esprit Nouveau, a ‘machine for living in’, an open-plan modular building. It would gain greater interest post WWII, when the need for replacement housing, using simpler-to-build, plain, unadorned architecture was needed across Europe.

Rosalind Ormiston is the author of multiple books on art including Art Deco, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gaugin and Pablo Picasso.