| Hector Guimard
1899-1904
Entrance to the Bolivar metro station in Paris
Cast iron, with grayish-green finish
460 x 590 cm
Acquired in 1964 from the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiennes
The entrances to Parisian metro stations do not only represent the monumental embodiment of French Art Nouveau, they are also a highly significant example of a newly coined phrase referring to a style, the "style Guimard" with its sumptuous floral shapes.
These characteristics are reflected in a description of the metro entrances at the time:
"We can now see masses of metal intertwining flowers rising up out of the ground, bunches of aquatic plants, light-emitting tulips, drenched in the fertile, seething sap of underground Paris."
It was due to the preference of the Director of the "Compagnie du Metropolitaine" for Art Nouveau that Guimard received the commission to re-design the metro station entrances. After all, this involved ignoring the outcome of a competition that had been announced in 1899. The fact that there had not only been unlimited enthusiasm for the entrances, which had been being erected since 1901, was due not so much to the unusual shapes, which introduced an entirely new tone to the Parisian urban landscape, as to this new, extremely fast form of transport, which operated underground, and was for this reason somewhat disconcerting, to which they provided access.
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