"Kaléidoscope: Ornements Abstraits"; Plate 1, Four Abstract Design Motifs

Various artists/makers

Not on view

This book, titled "Kaléidoscope: Ornements Abstraits" (Kaleidoscope: Abstract Ornaments), is bound on dark blue linen boards and contains a title page and 20 plates (numbered 1-20) presenting a total of 87 designs for textiles, in the style of Art Deco. Having its peak during the "Roaring Twenties" (second half of the 1920s) and the Depression years of the 1930s, the eclecticism of Art Deco was permeated by both traditional European design traditions and contemporary avant-garde. The designs presented in this book contain colorful, abstract motifs, which evoke, with their fragmented vocabulary, the dynamism of modern culture that was common of Art Deco.

This plate presents four designs for textiles with abstract motifs. Three are presented in vertical strips located on the upper part of the sheet, the one in the middle wider than the other two. The design on the left presents a variety of geometric shapes and zig-zagging lines, colored with shades of orange, red, purple, and some shapes rendered with silver. The design in the middle contains a pattern made with repeating cones, triangles and semi-circles colored with blue, gray, yellow, pink and shades of green. The design on the right contains an abstract design created with yellor, shades of blue, green and purple, and gray and silver touches. There is a fourth design, presented in a horizontal strip on the bottom of the sheet, which contains a pattern of a repeating rectangle with abstract motifs, which includes a vertical yellow stripe with black dots on the left, and several circles and semicircles executed with yellow, orange, black, and gray, and some of them decorated with yellow or black lines.

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