Art Deco the was born in the Paris of the 1920s, the whimsical and dazzling Paris of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, of Picasso and Cole Porter (in the year 1925, the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris is traced its baptism, so much so that, for a long time, said style was also called “Style 1925”).
This style line was influenced by contemporary movements such as Constructivism, Modernism, Futurism and Cubism.
Art Deco had these distinctive elements:
- Geometry
- Symmetry
- Pure, streamlined shapes (cylinder, sphere, cone...)
- Bold, vivid and contrasting colors
- Sumptuous materials (precious marbles, wood, metal, stainless steel, glass..).
- Smooth surface but angular angles, and only later (between the 1930s and 1940s) approached more curved forms
It was a revolutionary style in the modern sense, so modern that, at least so I believe, even today, some 100 years after its inception, it can be called the most avant-garde style of all, a style that continues to seduce designers, creatives, and art lovers the world over..
That historical premise having been made (perhaps boring for some but necessary for what I am about to tell you about the specific specimen I am presenting here), let us come to the very refined and very Italic Florentine fireplace that I am presenting to you in this card.
What does this fireplace possess that is special, except for being clearly “cubist”?
Well, it possesses that Lightness that is characteristic of almost all works of art from Florence.
First of all, the choice of one of the finest marbles in terms of “Whites,” a Carrara Statuary with a candid background (pure Calcium Carbonate) enriched with very light friezes (vegetable fossils not at all intrusive nor heavy, but rather resembling artfully arranged locks of hair);
Its lines, then, alternating smooth walls with parts in which the ancient “Roman column-like” grooves come across as delicate. right, in short, modernist but without exaggeration, futurist but not in the Littorio sense (word to the wise, few words).
But perhaps it is the whole complex of this design to be "light", from the sense of proportions (never exaggerated) to the design with some originality (regarding this point, know that the "veil" placed on the hearth is UNIQUE in the field of Art Deco fireplaces, never seen anything like it in almost half a century spent with my antique fireplaces).
THIS MANTEL WAS BORN IN FLORENCE BETWEEN 1930 AND 1940, AND ITS PRESERVATION IS EXCELLENT.
