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Du jardin “cubiste” au jardin art-déco by Jean-Pierre LE DANTEC – Château de Bénouville
From the ‘Cubist’ to the Art Deco garden
Shortly before the First World War struck France, two brothers, André and Paul Véra, instigated the idea of a ‘new garden’ to satisfy the needs of modern life and stylistically inspired by the Cubist movement, the first public manifestation of which was presented at the Salon d’Automne in 1912. But it was only on the occasion of the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris that Art Deco garden artists created a real sensation via the avant-garde creations of Mallet-Stevens, Guevrekian and, in a more subdued register inspired by the works of Forestier, Bac and Moroccan tradition, those of architects such as Laprades, Marrast and Lurçat. Public gardens such as those in Paris’s Square Croulebarbe (later named Square René Le Gall), Moreaux and Square de la Butte du Chapeau Rouge by Léon Azéma all bear witness to the Art Deco style applied to gardens.
Jean-Pierre Le Dantec
The École Centrale de Paris engineer, architect and historian Jean-Pierre Le Dantec is an honorary professor of French National Schools of Architecture. Director of the ENS of Architecture in Paris La Villette, where he is also director of the research team working on ‘Gardens, landscapes, territories’, he has published a number of works on architecture, urban planning, the art of gardens and landscapes, as well as novels. After Poétique des Jardins (2011), Dix Jardiniers (2012) published by Actes Sud, and Un Héros. Vie et mort de Georges Guingouin (novel) published by Gallimard, October 2017 will see the publication of: Le Disparu (novel) by Gallimard and Histoire des jardins et du paysagisme en France. Époques moderne et contemporaine by Editions Le Moniteur.