Dear friends,
We have just learned that the room at the town hall of the sixteenth arrondissement in which we planned to organise our exhibition on Hector Guimard, a pioneer of design, is not available on the dates originally planned. Consequently we have decided to postpone this event until after the summer holidays, in order to give it time for better visibility.
We have been busy over the past few days to find another venue suitable for our exhibition and we hope to give you this address in a few days.
The conditions outlined for participating in the financing of the exhibition are maintained and we will adapt our prizes and awards according to the new location.
We hope that we can count on your understanding and on your continuing support !
With thanks
Yours sincerely
The Cercle Guimard is a voluntary, non-profit-making association which brings together some of the pioneering figures in the discovery of Guimard’s works during the 1960s and 1970s along with new members who have developed a passion for these works more recently. Through the involvement and dynamism if its members the circle is now a key player in research about Hector Guimard. This research effort is bringing better understanding of the architect’s work as a whole and furthering our appreciation of a creative career that was more complex and of greater amplitude than hitherto suspected.
The architect Hector Guimard (1867-1942) was one of the leading representatives of the Art Nouveau movement in Paris, comparable to Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona of Victor Horta in Brussels. But the career of this man who designed and signed the emblematic entrances for the Paris metro during the Belle Époque is still not properly understood.
The Cercle Guimard intends to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the architect’s birth with an exhibition entitled ‘Hector Guimard, précurseur du design’ which will be mounted at the town hall of the sixteenth arrondissement in Paris from June 30th to July 27th 2017. The exhibition will show the work of a visionary architect who was also an entrepreneur, creative in all the fields of the decorative arts: furniture design, ornamental staff, carpets, lamps, cast-iron pieces, door handles and even cutlery...
The Cercle Guimard will share its discoveries about the architect and focus attention on his work in this exhibition which will be centred on the Avenue Perrichont workshops, little known up till now.
The exhibition hopes to appeal to a broad public and will represent, in Paris, the main event in the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Guimard’s birth.
Today, the Cercle Guimard does not receive any grants and relies financially on its members’ fees. The association has begun to spend some of the money necessary to get the exhibition project under way, covering photographic reproduction rights, for example, frames for certain works or display stands. But this budget is not sufficient and that is the reason we are making this appeal to the generosity of donors to complete the budget and achieve the proper organisation of the exhibition.
- If we can raise 1 500 Euros, we will be able to purchase the extra material necessary for presenting the works, such as display cases, stands and pedestals.
- If we raise 3 000 Euros, we will be able to enrich the exhibition’s staging with a reproduction of the wallpaper for the section reproducing an interior of the Castel Béranger.
- If we raise 5 000 Euros, we will be able to present a scale model (1:20) of Guimard’s workshops - the Ateliers d’Art et de Fabrication Guimard - which were located in the Avenue Perrichont and which no longer survive today.
The Cercle Guimard will be able to pursue the various initiatives already under way to help safeguard and interpret the architect’s heritage. The most important initiative here concerns the cultural and touristic project for transforming the Hôtel Mezzara into a Guimard museum-home. This town house designed by Guimard in 1910 was recently put on the market, but today is a protected historic monument. The association would like to see it recognised throughout Europe as the representative building of French Art Nouveau.
You can support this project by means of an online gift through this page, after inscription and connection on www.dartagnans.fr or by means of a bank check made out to the Cercle Guimard, sent to the following address :
Dartagnans
Campagne Hector Guimard a 150 ans
14 rue Crespin du Gast
75011 Paris
To follow the latest news about the Cercle Guimard, go to our website :
or our facebook page :
www.facebook.com/lecercleguima...
All the team of the Cercle Guimard wishes to thank you warmly for your support and makes an appointment with you this summer to discover the exhibition.
