Charles Rennie Mackintosh
(1868 - 1928)
C.R Mackintosh, versatile and inventive interpreter of Art Nouveau, fulfilled most of his career as interier decorator, painter and designer in Glasgow, a city which has retained many traces of his influence in its urban fabric.
One of the examples is the extraordinary edifice of the Glasgow School of Art. This is an architectural mass stated in the interior by furnishing and shelving which establish an uninterrupted continuity with the outside of the building, opening into complex and plastic structures which, in their design, evoke the constructional techniques of furniture rather than those of architecture.
The artist and his “Spook School” would become very well known and appreciated throughout Europe.
Indeed in 1931 Mackintosh took part in the Exhibition of the Vienna Secession School. In 1902 he participated in the exhibition of Modern Decorative Arts in Turin and in the same period he was given an award by the magazine “Zeitschrift fur Innendekoration” for the development of a design for the house of a famous personality of the area, as well as for the furnishings for the drawing room of the “Warndorfer House”.
Notwithstanding the desire to break away from Victorian tradition shared by the English “Arts and Crafts” movement, Mackintosh remains an isolated example in the United Kingdom. His strongly personal approach interpreting Art Nouveau did not find immediate recognition among his contemporaries as he did not conform to the decorative style of French and Belgian Art Nouveau which he always considered excessive.
Instead of work is linked to some exponents of the Vienna School, such as Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser.
The ornamental element of his art loses the character of an addition superimposed on the object and, instead, tends to be attached to the object itself as a strict ornament. His furniture is painted with lacquers which cover the natural character of the wood causing only the rigid and geometrically essential quality to be retained. Black is often used to highlight the decorative effect and the refined elegance.
Mackintosh died in 1928 in France, where he had moved with his wife in order to devote himself totally to painting.