25 Facts About Henri Sauvage

Henri Sauvage was a French architect and designer in the early 20th century.

Henri Sauvage was one of the most important architects in the French Art nouveau movement, Art Deco, and the beginning of architectural modernism.

Henri Sauvage was a pioneer in the construction of public housing buildings in Paris.

Henri Sauvage studied architecture at the Ecole nationale superieure des beaux-arts from 1892 to 1903, in the course taught by Jean-Louis Pascal, but quit the school before receiving a diploma, and described himself as self-taught in architecture.

The firm of Jolly and Henri Sauvage received many commissions for wallpaper from Art Nouveau architects; it made the wallpaper for Hector Guimard's first Art Nouveau building, the Castel Beranger.

En 1897, Henri Sauvage went to Brussels, where he worked with architect Paul Saintenoy, one of the pioneers of the Art Nouveau.

Henri Sauvage saw and studied the work of the rationalist architect Paul Hankar.

The time Henri Sauvage spent in Brussels changed his ideas about architecture, in the same way that, two years earlier, Hector Guimard had been inspired by the Art Nouveau Hotel Tassel designed by Victor Horta in Brussels.

In 1898 Henri Sauvage married Marie-Louise Carpenter, the daughter of furniture designer and sculptor Alexandre Charpentier.

At the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900, Henri Sauvage designed a theater for the American dancer Loie Fuller, working in collaboration Pierre Roche, Francis Jourdain and the ceramic artist Alexandre Bigot; a theater called le Guignol parisien; the exhibition stand for the firm of his father, Jolly fils et Henri Sauvage; a power generating station which produced electricity for the exhibition, as well as Art Nouveau entrances for the Exposition of the Street organized by Frantz Jourdain.

Henri Sauvage made several projects, not realized, for a buffet, decorative masts; a pavilion for the firm of Louis Majorelle, and another for the magazine La Mode Pratique.

Henri Sauvage designed and built six buildings for the company.

Henri Sauvage had hoped that, with his new design, higher buildings might be permitted, but the city refused to alter height limitations.

Henri Sauvage solved the problem of filling the interior space by putting his own office inside the building on rue Vavin, and a municipal swimming pool inside the building on rue des Amiraux.

Henri Sauvage was one of the first artists of his generation to recognize the end of the era of Art nouveau, which he abandoned in 1909.

In 1913, Just before the First World War, Henri Sauvage built a new structure for Louis Majorelle in what later became known as Art deco, making him, along with Auguste Perret, one of the pioneers in this style.

Henri Sauvage participated actively in the Exposition des arts decoratifs in Paris in 1925, which gave Art deco its name.

Henri Sauvage designed two movie theaters in Paris; the Sevres, at 80 rue de Sevres in the 7th arrondissement, built in 1920 and destroyed in 1975; and the Gambetta-Palace, at 6 rue Belgrand, in the 20th arrondissement, built in 1920.

Henri Sauvage took its name from the famed building of artist's studios built by Richard Morris Hunt in New York in 1857.

In 1930, Henri Sauvage became engaged in his final large project, the expansion of the department store La Samaritaine, a city landmark in the center of the city next to the Seine.

In reconstructing and expanding the store, Henri Sauvage preserved many of the art nouveau touches and decorations of the earlier building, while making a new Paris landmark of art deco design.

Henri Sauvage worked on the building from 1925 to 1928, and in 1930 constructed a third building for the store.

In 1931, in collaboration with Jourdain, Henri Sauvage built a second department store, called Decre, on rue Moulon in the city of Nantes.

In both projects, Henri Sauvage used his own experience and experiments with prefabricated build to build very rapidly.

Twenty marble mosaics made from Henri Sauvage's cartoons decorate the Art Deco lobby of Carnegie Library of Reims.