A really quick guide to art deco

Our Art Deco Centenary series will delve into the style throughout March but to help start us off, this five-minute guide covers all the basics.

What is it?

Art deco refers to a design style that was particularly prevalent in the 1920s and 30s. It has been described as a “total style” – meaning that it prevailed across disciplines, including architecture, interiors, furniture design, transport design, industrial design, graphic design, fashion and ceramics and homewares.

At the time, what we now categorise as art deco was variously known as “modernistic”, “moderne”, “jazz-modern”, or “zig-zag” design, among other names. The term “art deco” was not popularised until 1968, with the publication of Bevis Hillier’s book Art Deco of the 20s and 30s.

Hillier is often credited with coining the term, though he himself has pointed out that it had already appeared as part of Les Annees 25 exhibition at Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 1966, and was used in an article in The Times newspaper in the same year.

In any case, the term “art deco” was derived from the name of a seminal exposition held in Paris in 1925, called Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes.

What makes something art deco?

Scholars often emphasise the difficulty of defining art deco, particularly since it occurred across so many design mediums. Leading expert Alastair Duncan has described art deco as “a large and heterogeneous body of artworks whose sole common denominator appears to be its contradictory characteristics”.

Complicating the question further is the fact that, unlike many other design movements, art deco was never underpinned by an intellectual theory.

However, there are some common tropes that we can point to. For one thing, art deco tended to be highly exuberant, with liberal use of colour, ornament and luxurious materials – and that is what distinguishes it from other 1920s and 30s designs.

Recurring motifs include geometric patterns and depictions of fountains, flowers and sunbursts. As that suggests, art deco usually had one foot planted in traditional notions of beauty – but with the other it strode confidently towards the future, embracing modernity.

Designs were often inspired by machines or produced using machines or both, resulting in plenty of angular elements, while the concept of speed was evoked in the form of streamlined curves.

Archetypal art deco will typically juxtapose these two ideals, or “contradictory characteristics”.

Another important aspect of art deco was exoticism, driven by the rampant colonialism and globalisation of the time. Art deco designers were scavengers, lifting from tribal African sculpture, Mayan temples, Japanese lacquerwork, Byzantine, Chinese and Aztec works. The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 also led to a particular fascination with ancient Egypt that is often reflected in art deco.

When did it begin?

As mentioned above, art deco was popular during the 1920s and 30s, and it remains closely associated with those decades.

The style was properly introduced to the world through the hugely successful 1925 “arts décoratifs et industriels modernes” exhibition in Paris, also mentioned above. More than 20 countries participated, answering an invitation to produce pavilions and exhibitions showcasing “new inspiration and real originality” in design.

However, while the 1925 expo was highly influential in bringing so much “moderne” design together, art deco had certainly been around before that. In fact, the Paris expo was originally intended to go ahead 10 years earlier, but was delayed by The Great War.

France, unsurprisingly, is generally considered the birthplace of art deco. The first art-deco building in Paris, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysée, opened in 1913, while the artist Erté had been producing his pioneering art deco illustrations since 1912.

But early art deco was appearing elsewhere around this time, too, and some experts have pointed even further back in time – to Charles Rennie Mackintosh‘s Glasgow School of Art building, completed in 1909, and Louis Sullivan’s divisive Transportation Building in Chicago, completed in 1893. There was a period where art deco precursors, particularly art nouveau, were gradually morphing into what we now recognise as art deco.

Why did it begin?

Two practical factors are often cited to explain the popularity of art deco during the 1920s and 30s.

One is technological advances. New materials became available, such as steel and reinforced concrete – which enabled the construction of skyscrapers – while beyond architecture, chrome, bakelite, veneer, chrome and Vitrolite glass were now at designers’ fingertips, as well as mass-manufacturing techniques. Electric lighting also played a role, with many art deco buildings colourfully illuminated.

Meanwhile, the emergence of motorcars and ocean liners heralded an obsession with speed and travel, going hand-in-hand with streamlined design and exoticism, respectively. Technology and the invention of the camera were also significant in the rise of cubism and expressionism, the artistic movements sometimes considered to be art deco’s creative ancestors.

The other is the first world war, which concluded in 1918. Historians commonly argue that the hedonism that emerged in the 1920s was a response to the devastation and austerity of the war – and art deco was the perfect backdrop.

Where was it popular?

Art deco has been dubbed “the first international style” because of the way it spread around the world. This was partly down to the multi-national nature of the 1925 expo, but also because new forms of mass media, such as cinema, rapidly exposed the aesthetic to a wider audience.

The USA had not participated in the 1925 expo, but it arguably became the home of art deco after France’s early domination, particularly in New York City and Miami Beach.

Art deco became popular across much of Europe outside of France, in cities such as Brussels, London, Amsterdam, Lisbon and Bucharest.

It also emerged in hotspots around the globe, including Havana, Casablanca, Shanghai, Mumbai, Mexico City, Durban, and Montevideo, to name a handful. Art deco architecture has a habit of cropping up in unexpected places, such as Kaunas, Lithuania’s second city, while a book has been written about art deco brickwork in Baghdad.

What are the names to know?

Because it encompassed so many aspects of design, there were a huge number of designers that contributed to the art deco style. Many designers dabbled in art deco for a decade or two before moving into other ways of working – meaning there are few names whose careers are synonymous with the style.

Most people tend to associate art deco with famous designs, rather than the designers behind them. As Patricia Bayer wrote in her book Art Deco Architecture, “art deco architecture is not an architecture of personalities, of star architects… Few members of the general public in the West can name an art deco architect, but most are more than familiar, for instance, with the Empire State Building.”

However, some designers were particularly influential. For instance, though Russian-born, the aforementioned Erté helped to establish the essential vibe of French art deco in the 1910s and 20s, especially with his magazine covers.

Other significant French designers were the furniture and interior designer Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, who played a major role at the 1925 expo, ironworker Edgar Brandt and glass designer René Lalique.

In New York, architects Raymond Hood and Ralph Thomas Walker worked on many of the best-known art deco buildings, while Timothy L Pflueger had an outsized impact on art deco architecture in California.

Among the most significant women designers who worked primarily in art deco was Hildreth Meière, an American muralist whose pieces appear in several landmark buildings.

When did it come to an end?

Art deco reached a zenith around the mid-1930s, with many of the most famous examples of the style emerging around this time.

However, it faded quickly. Having risen as an exultant reaction to world war one austerity, it was effectively killed off by the new austerity of world war two, which started in 1939.

In this harsh new environment, flashy art deco was outcompeted by more functional and refined modernism. For the next few decades, architecture was dominated by the international style championed by Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, while design entered its mid-century modern era – both of which remain more influential in 2025.

This guide was compiled with the help of Roberta Nusim and Stephen Van Dyk at the Art Deco Society of New York.

Art Deco Centenary

This article is part of Dezeen’s Art Deco Centenary series, which explores art deco architecture and design 100 years on from the “arts décoratifs” exposition in Paris that later gave the style its name.