Georges
Barbier

George barbier (Georges Augustin Barbier, October 16, 1882 - March 16, 1932, Nantes) is a graphic artist, one of the famous French illustrators of the early 20th century, who worked in the Art Nouveau style.

Features of the artist Georges Barbier: versatile artist, Georges Barbier has always been associated with fashion and design. He created book illustrations, sketches for fashionable fabrics and wallpapers, designed costumes for cinema and theater, including Sergei Dyagilev, and did not go past jewelry design. And the artist became famous for his art deco illustrations advertising models of famous Parisian couturiers. It was the Barbier drawings with dogs, gazelles and panthers that inspired the masters of the jewelry house of Cartier, and the famous “Lady with the Panther” became in 1914 the “face” of this company's advertising company. Barbier style formed under the influence of creativity Aubrey Beardsleyand his color solutions are often compared to works. Leona baksta.

Famous works of the artist Georges Barbier: "Lady with Panther", “Lido”, “Harlequin”, “Altsion”.

Georges Barbier was born in the French city of Nantes in a wealthy bourgeois family of traders. Biographical information about the artist's childhood is extremely scarce; it is known that in Nantes he attended the School of Fine Arts, and in 1907 he entered the Higher National School of Fine Arts in Paris, where he studied in the workshop of Jean Paul Loren. In 1911, Barbier held his first solo exhibition, which marked the beginning of his career as an artist.

Seen by publisher Lucien Vogel, Barbier began working as an illustrator at Gazette du bon ton, the flagship of the fashion industry. Wallpapers that he developed for the studio of Andre Groulet, began to enjoy a resounding success. Barbier is noticed by fashion couturiers: he works a lot for Paul Poiret, Madeleine Vionna, Jeanne Lanvin and other fashion designers. In 1913, he began work on advertising projects for his friend Louis Cartier and created the famous black panther pattern, which has reached our days in many variations of jewelry.

During the First World War, Barbier continued his collaboration with the publication, wrote reports from Italy, theater reviews. In 1912 he became a member of the Société des artistes decorateurs, the French Society of Graphic Designers, and since then has regularly exhibited his works at the Company's Salons.
Stylish, art deco-inspired illustrations promoted Barbier’s collaboration with famous publications such as Vogue, L'Illustration, Femina, Le Jardin des Dames et Des Modes, and La Vie Parisienne. He did not just draw fashionably dressed women - he created fashion itself, conveyed in its illustrations the spirit of modernity, elegant, sophisticated and respectable. Barbier depicted not only women and clothing, but also the relationship between women and their clothing. His essays and articles on the theme of "haute couture", art and design had a lot of weight in the global fashion industry.

Barbier rotated in the most fashionable and outrageous circles of the world capital of fashion, everywhere he was known and welcomed. The artist was part of a group of notebooks and dandies “Knights of the Bracelet”, known for their secular manners, costumes - they led a vibrant lifestyle. Barbier’s friends included his cousins, artists Pierre Brissot and Bernard Bute de Monveland also Jean Besnard, Paul Iribe, Georges Lepap and Charles Martin - all of them in the future became stars of the first magnitude in the world of fashionable illustration. Barbier biographers write unequivocally that the artist had homosexual inclinations and was close to the writer and the famous secular lion, Count Robert de Montesquieu, and also was a friend of Marcel Proust. Barbier completed the illustrations for a number of books, including the works of Theophile Gautier, Paul Verlaine and Charles Baudelaire.

In 1923, Barbier designed costumes for the Follies Bergère at Max Weldy's Fashion House. Together with the legendary Erte He created the scenery and costumes for a number of American projects, including the famous costumes for Rudolph Valentino, in which the actor starred in the film "Monsieur Boker." Barbier dominated the world of advertising, writing visual solutions for such famous brands as Renault and Elizabeth Arden.

Georges Barbier died at the peak of popularity, he was only 50 years old. The artist was buried in his native city of Nantes, the ceremony was modest and inconspicuous. The heirs auctioned out his library, and a collection of Japanese and European erotica was bequeathly transferred to the National Library, where it was placed in the “Enfer” section with limited access. The first posthumous exhibition of works by Georges Barbier was held only in 2008 at the Museum of Fortuny (Venice)