Nouveau art and architecture flourished in major European cities between 1890 and 1914. Professionally guided tour — Art Nouveau, Riga Around Latvia is a professional organization and that professionalism extends to our guides just as well. You will be given the opportunity to view it in all its glory and beauty. The buildings in this area were mostly built in the early 20th century on land that had never really been built up. Hey I was looking for some info about countries which lie on Adriatic shore and found your blog.
The walls of the first floor are of rough texture, while above it there is a smooth and light finish. The Art Nouveau movement was born out of an innate desire to leave behind the rigid world of academic art, and present it as a medium of expression or 'free will', as they say. Riga, the capital of Latvia, has more than 800 buildings in the Art Nouveau style. Particularly interesting are the reliefs with a diverse depiction of rose blooms. Up to a third of Rīga Art Noveau falls in this category. Local decorative arts companies produced items for both their regional market and the Russian Empire, reaching destinations such as and. Certain heaviness of forms, monumental nobility, steep roofs, window aisles with angled tops, and elegant ethnographic motifs are the main features of this trend.
Between 1910 and 1913, from 300 to 500 new buildings were built every year, mostly in the Art Nouveau style, and most of them outside the old town. The most characteristic examples are buildings on and near Alberta Street designed by M. In the United States, art nouveau ideas were expressed in the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, , and. Traditional wooden buildings and the decorative arts served as the main source of inspiration. We could go on and on, country by country, different names, slightly distinct styles, but one common idea remained: changing the status quo. Art Nouveau in Riga Riga, the capital of Latvia, is an Art Nouveau city.
The façade of the structure is made of blue brick and light plastering. While the Art Nouveau style until reaching Riga was still fairly consistent around its influences — nature, shapes, plants and flowers, colourfulness — suddenly Eisenstein went in a direction nobody else even thought of going before: involving human, mythical and even zoological elements into his design. Eisenstein made use of elements of almost every historical architectural style that he could think of, from Roman design through the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and on to Classicism. Essential art nouveau buildings Alberta iela Nearly every building on this street is an art nouveau masterpiece and roughly half of them were designed by Mikhail Eisenstein including the buildings at 2, 4, 6, 8 and 13. This is considerably more than in any other city in the world. Art Nouveau buildings survive in most Polish cities, with the exception of Warsaw, where Communist authorities destroyed the few Art Nouveau buildings that survived the Nazi razing of Warsaw on the grounds that the buildings were decadent. This theme of torment and anguish has preoccupied many Symbolist artists, among them Edvard Munsh whose painting The scream represents the tortured side of the psyche and is viewed as metaphor for anxiety in the modern world.
The Art Nouveau movement reached its peak in the early 20th century, which is when the majority of Riga's Art Nouveau houses were built, beginning in 1899. With the collapse of communism it took several years until the bureaucratic intricacies ironed out the faith of all the buildings. Its growth rate during this period was the highest the city had ever experienced. Stanislaw Wyspianski was the leading Art Nouveau artist in Poland, his paintings, theatrical designs, stained glass, and building interiors are widely admired and celebrated in the National Museum in Krakow. The flowery style became a part of everyday life and was present in well-to-do homes in furniture, flatware and fashion and was commercially used in graphic design, most famously in advertisement posters. Significantly, most of the Art Nouveau buildings were designed and built by Latvian architects. In Melbourne, the Victorian Arts Society, Milton House, Melbourne Sports Depot, Melbourne City Baths, Conservatorium of Music and Melba Hall, Paston Building, and Empire Works Building all reflect the Art Nouveau style.
Elizabetes street 10b Architect Mikhail Eisenstein Civil engineer, revered Latvian architect, whose 18 apartment buildings have been built in Riga at the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. Not a bad base to explore the surrounding area though. He is best known for his collection of buildings on Alberta iela that is famous for its unusual sculpture, coloured bricks and tiles, geometric ornaments and uniquely shaped windows. Currently we do not use targeting or targeting cookies. Meant to be homogeneous in appearance, the buildings can be found, in part, on the famous Alberta Street, where the ornaments of Art Nouveau can be both playful and fiery.
In total, there are over 800 Art Nouveau buildings in Riga, but finding them all would be quite an ambitious undertaking, so we'll try to guide you to the most noteworthy ones. Art Nouveau oasis in western Latvia A rich heritage of Art Nouveau architecture can be found in the port city of. . Sticking out like a sore thumb next to the House of the Blackheads is a dark and squat 1970s Soviet building that until recently contained the Occupation Museum. The serpent has numerous symbolic associations and is often linked with the feminine principle. It will be interesting to see the contrast of these buildings with the Gothic ones in Old Town. While the Art Nouveau style until reaching Riga was still fairly consistent around its influences — nature, shapes, plants and flowers, colourfulness — suddenly Eisenstein went in a direction nobody else has been before, involving human, mythical and even zoological elements into his design.
Wealthy entrepreneurs erected several hundred multi-story buildings. The economic wave from the continent brought with it not only a development in life quality, but also the fashionable trends from other parts of the continent, including this new architectural and design style with so many different names: Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau was seen as an appropriate modern-day response to the excesses of its predecessor, which was the Victorian design. I would recommend going just for the staircase leading up to the top floor apartment that hosts the museum. The restored apartment is filled with authentic design objects constructed between 1890 and World War I in cities throughout Europe, particularly Paris, Brussels, Vienna, and St. Jūrmala was a getaway of choice for the Communist elite in the mid-20th century, and both Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev were regulars.