Italian Liberty Style

The first volume in the series on Twentieth-Century Decorative and Applied Arts is dedicated to what is known in Italy as 'Stile Liberty', or Liberty style. Flowers, ribbons, garlands, dragonflies, butterflies and graceful young women dancing, followed by a host of curvilinear, sinuous and spiralling forms: this was Liberty, the new style that at the dawn of the twentieth century, by creating a rupture with traditional artistic forms, spread throughout Europe. Although the movement was short-lived, the First International Exposition of Modern Decorative Arts held in Turin in 1902 showed that it numbered excellent interpreters in every single field.

Chini's ceramic works, furniture designed by Quarti and Basile, Mazzucotelli's wrought iron objects, glass-work by Buffa and Cambellotti: pieces that are now much sought after by private collectors and museums.