The Eastern French town of Nancy has been the capital of Art Nouveau at the end of the 20th Century thanks to its commemoration of the 100th anniversary of that movement. Some 380 000 people visited the Art Nouveau exhibitions at the Poirel Galleries, the Museum of the School of Nancy and the Museum of Fine Arts of that city in 1999.
Among the artists most honoured were Emile Gallé and Antonin Daum, the masters of artistic glass works, the painters Victor Prouvé and Emile Friant, Jacques Gruber the master of stained glass and Louis Majorelle and Eugène Vallin, the furniture makers.
Nancy has been a major artistic centre for centuries, notably during the 18th Century with many miniature painters such as J. A Laurent, François Dumont, Jean-Baptiste Isabey or Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin from nearby Saint-Dié before it became the main pole of Art Nouveau activity in France at the end of the 19th Century.
Some 400 pieces from several French and foreign museums and collectors as well have been exhibited there and the main interest of the exhibition was to confront exceptional objects or furniture such as this «Lorraine Flora» table produced by Gallé for Czar Nicolas II with long-neck vases by Daum. Now the inhabitants of Nancy are utterly proud of such artistic creations that were forgotten during over 50 years after 1920.
Now town officials plan to organise major art and cultural exhibitions every two or three years.
The last exhibition of 1999 has been devoted to Nancy painter Jacques Majorelle, son of Louis, who mostly worked in Morocco from 1917, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts until January 31st 2000. Majorelle painted many parts of Morocco at different hours of the day and produced some striking luminous works during his career.
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