In 1925, more than 15 million people from around the world visited Paris to see the Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts, a grand display of contemporary design and craftsmanship that presented 15,000 exhibits from more than 20 countries. Despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that the organisers refused to include historical styles and insisted on highlighting recent work, many of the elegant geometric exhibits on display have themselves become museum pieces. In 1966, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (MAD) popularised the term ‘art déco’ by including it in the title of a major show commemorating the exhibition of 1925. Now, to mark the centenary of the International Exhibition, MAD is putting on an enormous survey of art deco objects – more than 1,000 works, arranged in rough chronological order – that demonstrates how the style evolved from its origins in the 1910s to its maturity in the 1920s and its reinterpretation by artists and designers in subsequent decades (22 October–26 April 2026).
Find out more from MAD’s website.
Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary
