André Vera
| André Vera | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1881 Paris, France |
| Died | 1971 |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation | Garden designer and town planner |
| Known for | Le Nouveau Style (1912) |
André Vera (1881–1971) was a French garden designer, town planner and pioneer of the Art Deco style. He is known for his collaboration with his brother, the painter and decorator Paul Vera. He wanted to renew French design, which he felt had been in decline since the 1840s, and to introduce a modern French style that maintained continuity with earlier French tradition. He was an advocate of the formal French garden, with strictly geometrical designs based on lines and squares in place of the curvilinear forms of Art Nouveau. In urban design he stressed the importance of including trees as architectural elements, which he thought would enhance the mental and physical health of the residents.
André Vera was born in Paris in 1881. His father was Gustave Lėon Vera, an architect, and his younger brother Paul became a painter and decorator designer. André Vera became a garden design theoretician and a town planner.
The Vera brothers were early adopters of the Art Deco style. This originated with the work of Louis Süe, and was described by André Vera in his manifesto Le Nouveau Style published in L'Art décoratif in January 1912. He called for classicism, symmetricality and mathematical order in designs, with stylized naturalistic decorative motifs. Vera asserted that decoration should use contrasting rich colors in place of the pale tones of Art Nouveau. Vera rejected internationalism and pastiche and called for respect for French traditions, in particular for the rationalism of the Louis XVI period and the more comfortable Louis-Philippe style. In Vera's view, French design had ceased to innovate in the 1840s, but had resorted to pastiche, the start of a long decline. He wrote in 1912, "It is therefore from the Louis-Philippe style that we can draw the best lesson, especially when one considers that the point is not to repeat it but rather to continue it."
The Vera brothers joined with other artists to create L'Atalier Français, a cooperative business that borrowed organizational idea from the Wiener Werkstätte. The other members included Louis Süe, Roger de La Fresnaye, André Groult, Gustave Louis Jaulmes (1873–1959) and André Mare (1885–1932). André Vera wrote a manifesto that defined the goal of the group as combining traditional and modern ideas to bring clarity, order and aesthetic unity to interior design. Vera joined the Compagnie des Arts Français, which succeeded the Atalier Français after World War I (1914–18). He wrote that it, "would have no truck with either the English or the Dutch, but [continued] the French tradition, working in such a way that this new style will be the heir to the last traditional style that we have had, that is, the style Louis-Philippe."
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