Hector Guidmard JULIA WHITTELSEY Hector- Germain Guimard. Birthplace: Lyons, France on March 13th 1867. Parents/ Family of Hector Guimard Father Germain Rene was an orthopedist originally from Toucy, Mother was a seamstress from Larajasse Both passed away in 1899. Adeline was Guimard’s wife who outlived him by 23 years and returned to France to settle his affairs and ended up passing on some works to museums in Paris and even some materials to the Museum of Modern Art in New York where they ended up moving due to Adeline’s Jewish descents before Guimard died 4 years after they moved in 1938.
Hector Guimard is the best known French Art Nouveau architect. In some French circles this movement was referred to as “Style Guimard”. Which was said that he gave himself his own nickname. “The artist does not create his environment, he is the product thereof” –Hector Guimard His version of Art Nouveau was nationalistic. At barley 15 he got admitted to the Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifis in Paris as student 47,936. He won three bronze medals and two silver in 1884 and four bronze and five silver in 1885, including the Prix du Ministre, the Prix Jumelle, the Prix Norman and the schools grand prize, the Prix Jay worth 300 francs. March 17th 1885 Guimard graduates and takes the entrance exam for the architecture department of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. First part of the exam students must design a building, complete a drawing, and plaster model of an ornament in bas-relief. Second part of the exam has to do with science and history. After receiving grades back he was 52/63 candidates accepted and enrolled into studio classes. Gustave Raulin who was great builder of greenhouses also was a student. Got his start in architecture from his parents having acquaintances that were able to introduce him to his first clients. The Nozal family was one in particular who demonstrated how much he cultivated meaningful relationships with this clients and led him to design their funerary monuments. Guimard however did like to keep his business between himself and clients and not have many partners or assistants to keep his work personal in nature. Built his first building when he was twenty-one years old. Logic, harmony, and sentiment were the three watchwords of Guimard’s first statement of artistic program. About the Art Nouveau Art Nouveau was a brief and controversial movement which Guimard was the main representative in Paris and all the more fragile because of the main clientele which was middle- class shop owners and small manufacturers was a newly relative group of patrons. Art Nouveau appeared in the decorative arts, in town of Nancy. The early motifs produced there included ornamentation inspired by local flora- became statements of national identity. It took several more years for this style to find a more stable and monumental home in architecture. Buildings were thought of vulgar and exhibitionist but the change in taste occurred and people began to love not only thanks to Guimard but also Victor Horta who also had the grim perspective. Art Nouveau was aiming to modernize designs and escape from the historical styles that were popular before. Inspiration was drawn from organic and also geometric forms. The organic forms came from the natural flow of stems and blossoming of plants. People either loved this style or hated it but as time and Guimard’s designs grew so did the Art Nouveau Earlier Works Hotel Rosze, Paris 1891 Twenty-four years old when he built private dwelling. This was before talk about Art Nouveau but in Nancy, Great Britain, and Belgium people were already dreaming of new art. This architecture is an example of what Guimard learned at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Shows as evidence of what he can do. This façade uses many references to styles of the past to contain a visual impression but the brick and siliceous sandstone used remains constant in his architecture and used to end his career.
Hotel Jassede, Paris, 1893
To create the bricks, Guimard took pleasure in contrasting glazed bricks with bricks from the Kiln. Brick and sandstone are being used and building is built directly on street which you will notice with all of his apartment buildings. Hotel Delfau, Paris, 1894
Medieval traits linger in this design with its upfront and comfortable middle-class bow to the Gothic. The triangular gable on the top story is original in this façade with the recessed windows which have been seen since the Middle Ages. Instead of lightening up the building with floral decorations and animals he decides to use a cock which Guerin designed the motif and Muller glazed and baked the ceramics like he always did for Guimard in many other designs. However around 1920 the private dwelling was transformed into a nursing home called the “Hygiene Home”. Fame Begins Castel Beranger, Paris 1895-98
Building that made him famous. Guimard regarded this building to be one of his most important. Multistory apartment building of 36 units in the 16th arrondissement of Paris which is known as administrative district. This is the major masterwork of French Art Nouveau. First apartment structure in the city to use the new style. This style displays the complete range of Guimard’s creative powers in the Art Nouveau. A widow who owned the lot allowed Guimard who wasn’t a well known architect yet to design and in 1899 her building won competition for best building conceived that year in Paris. “The building makes extensive use of copper sheeting and ornament in the balconies, downspouts, and gates, much of which has been oxidized to a natural green, using strange motifs such as facial masks and seahorses. Its name "Castel" suggests its comparison (especially its picturesque quality and use of rusticated stone) to a medieval castle and, by extension, the Gothic style, which Guimard admired” (Hector). Details of street façade: Cast-iron seahorse Small window ground floor cast- iron detail Third story balcony cast-iron is example of the “Japanism” fashion at the time.
Ecole Du Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart School), Paris 1895 Priest of Sacre Coeur called on Guimard to build their new school. For the building he used lighter bricks than usual and combined beige with reddish tone. More than half filled with windows providing natural light for the schoolboys. Each framed by uprights and supports in siliceous sandstone separated by cast-iron. “The key feature of the structure, however, is at ground level, where Guimard has used pairs of inclined iron columns arranged in a V shape to raise all the classroom space one floor above. The scheme is directly taken from a design by Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-duc for just such a school, to demonstrate the possibilities of iron structural technology. Here, Guimard has rotated the columns 90 degrees from Viollet's plan to align with the plane of the façades and thus clear the space at ground level under the rest of the structure as a playground, thus solving the problem of the limited space on the site. Much of this area at ground level, however, was enclosed in the 1950s, which eliminated this recreational function” (Hector). Guimard once again seeks the ideas of Viollet-le- Duc. The older master of this idea was the first to urge the a forms function should be subject to what their initial function and during this time he proposed the use of metal and demonstrated how much medieval art might of achieved if it had disposal iron, cast iron, and steel. (Hector). Maison Coilliot, 1898-1900
The architecture of Castel Beranger was first to combine stone since the Renaissance. Guimard uses ceramics of his own designs created in Eugene Gillet kiln that he bakes for him to create the green turquoise ceramics you seen in this architecture. Air vents bottom similar to Castel Beranger design. Tear drop window design above door Villa La Bluette, 1899
Large pieces of sandstone used to create outside foundation Inclined girders rising from the ground, part of house that projects the left is brought back into equilibrium which is the general idea in which he experiemented in Ecole de Sacre-Coeur in Paris. Façade overlooking the sea Metropolitan, Paris, 1899-1900
This was Guimard’s signature work that he was commissioned to design as a favor from the Socialist- controlled Paris City Council and was only the second city after London to have constructed an underground railroad. “Guimard created three standard types of entrances: enclosed, tripod canopies, and open to the sky - that use the twisted, organic vegetal forms typical of Art Nouveau. At first, these appear to be nearly seamless, yet in fact they are constructed out of several cast iron parts that were easily mass-produced at the modern iron foundries to the east of Paris” (Hector).
The red bulbs are used to illuminate many entrances at night to alert passengers who were on street level. Guimard invented the typography used in the yellow porcelain sign that hangs between the lamp. Widely and famously known now as Metropolitan
Jessede Apartments, Paris, 1903
Building was pure Guimard. Showed detailed facades and Guimard brilliantly placed balconies in this structure. On the third story the balcony sweeps around the façade like a girdle and on the fourth story the platform is off-axis and placed at an angle but still respecting the above bow window. The bow window is roofed itself by a terrace fenced off by his classic iron work that we have continuously been seeing The topmost part of building was the small “maids’ room” and again showing the would-be medieval style that showed through design during the Art Nouveau Stained glasse windows and doors used again (Castel Beranger) Take away How consistent all of his designs stayed throughout his entire career. Till this day we still see the funky design in the Art Nouveau architecture because it is inspired by nature which surrounds us everyday and is constantly on the mind of designers and artist because of the natural simple flow. Hector Guimard helped in designing the pathway for the modernized architecture which is what the timeline eventually will run into. Very impressed with the talent he possessed at such a young age and the fulfillment he was able to achieve in a successful career as the best known architecture during the Art Nouveau Bibliography
Graham, F. Lanier. Hector Guimard. The Museum of Modern Art, 1970. “Hector Guimard Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works.” The Art Story, www.theartstory.org/artist-guimard-hector-artworks.htm#pnt_1.
“Hector Guimard.” Jason Jacques, www.jasonjacques.com/historic/hector-guimard.
Vigne, Georges. Hector Guimard. Delano Greenidge Editions, 2003.
Vigne, Georges, and Maurice Rhemis. Hector Guimard. Harry N. Abrams Inc, 1988. Pictures
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