Hector Guimard

Hector Guimard (Lyon, March 10, 1867 – New York, May 20, 1942) was an architect, who is now the best-known representative of the French Art Nouveau style of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Guimard's critical reputation has risen since the 1960s, as many art historians have praised his architectural and decorative work, the best of it done during a relatively brief fifteen years of prolific creative activity. Like many other French nineteenth-century architects, Guimard attended the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris from 1882 to 1885, where he became acquainted with the theories of Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. These rationalist ideas provided the basis for the principles of Art Nouveau. Some...