Roaring: Art, Fashion, and the Automobile in France, 1918–1939

April 12–July 27, 2025

Entrance in Taylor Hall

 

Roaring: Art, Fashion, and the Automobile in France, 1918–1939

Punctuated by world wars, a global depression, and social upheaval, early 20th-century France attracted visionaries from across the globe with creative and economic opportunities. Fusing craft and technology, automobiles absorbed and transformed facets of modern art, design, fashion, and architecture.

After World War I (1914–18), cars, long the domain of engineers, met the minds and hands of France’s designers, artists, and craftspeople. Materials and techniques moved fluidly between sumptuous Art Deco interiors and luxury automobiles. Avant-garde showrooms, glittering displays, and thrilling races helped market the thousands of cars driving off assembly lines. Those same factories became centers of a labor movement that brought paid vacations and efficient automobiles to French workers.

In cars, artists discovered novel perspectives, subject matter, and even canvases. As driving became more comfortable, motoring fashions evolved into stylist wardrobe staples. Magazines portrayed liberated women dressed in knit sportswear driving convertibles. When fashions streamlined, so did cars. Embodying aerodynamics and natural forms, the sculptural curves of 1930s French coachbuilt automobiles are unrivaled today.

Featuring paintings, photographs, sculpture, furniture, films, fashion, textiles, and automobiles, Roaring illuminates the rich ecosystems that nourished this golden age of French automotive design. It highlights innovations across art and industry by those who embraced the automobile as a provocative expression of the modern age.

 

Brutal Machines Made Beautiful

“It’s crude and brutal, but it works,” conceded René Panhard, inventor of the modern automobile transmission. With well-trained engineers, canny entrepreneurs, and Paris as its center, France arose as a leader in car design and production. Although surpassed in output by the United States in 1907, it remained dominant in Europe until the 1930s.

French automotive firms often emerged from metalwork trades, especially bicycles. Jacques-Henri Lartigue photographed motley assortments of wheeled vehicles vying for supremacy on dirt tracks before World War I (1914–18). Wartime manufacturing helped industrialize the French car sector. France’s highway system, already the largest in Europe, increasingly attracted automobile tourists. In 1917, Henri Matisse painted a tree-lined street southwest of Paris from the comfort of his closed-top Renault.

After the war, aided by artists and advertisers, automobiles became synonymous with a fashionable, fast-paced life. Sonia Delaunay declared, “The car, it was modernity.” She applied her colorful geometric patterns to clothing and automobiles alike. Fernand Léger painted the modern city—with its traffic and billboards—as mechanized abstractions. Carmaker André Citroën established the first in-house marketing department. To coincide with the 1925 Paris Exhibition, he purchased the rights to put his brand in lights on the Eiffel Tower, the enduring icon of modern France.

 

Fernand Jacopozzi,
French (born Italy), 1877–1932
Italo Stalla,
Italian, 1888–1972

Film of Citroën Light Display,
1928 and 1934

Swirling ribbons, shooting comets, stars, and double chevrons light the Eiffel Tower ablaze, making way for striking block letters: CITROËN. Electrical engineer Fernand Jacopozzi solicited funding from French automaker André Citroën to realize this ambitious technological feat. Captured in domestic and international newsreels, it transformed the Parisian night sky into a spectacle just in time for the 1925 Paris Exhibition. For Citroën, an innovative advertiser, this was an opportunity to aid city officials keen to impress visitors—while broadcasting his brand to millions.

GP Archives 3410GJ 00016 and PR 1928 52 1

 

Citroën,
Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine, France, founded 1919 painted by Bernadette Ramaekers,
Dutch

B14 Coupe, 1928

Energetic and inventive, André-Gustave Citroën (1878–1935) championed a robust, affordable automobile. Partnering with American steel-body manufacturer Edward G. Budd (1870–1946), the Citroën B10 became the first all-steel-bodied European car in 1924. This B14 model was introduced at the Paris Motor Show in October 1926 with an array of open- and closed-body styles. Period advertising emphasized its comfortable new lightweight chassis.

Dutch artist Bernadette Ramaekers painted this B14’s body in the style of Sonia Delaunay, who presented a similar Ariès Torpédo with contrasting blocks of color at the 1925 Paris Exhibition.
A widely published photograph shows two models posing with the dazzling car dressed in corresponding fashions by Delaunay and the French couturier Jacques Heim (see image).

Courtesy of Edward F. Niedzwiecki 2025.56

Coats designed by Sonia Delaunay and Jacques Heim with Ariès Torpédo, in front of the Pavillon du Tourisme designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens, Paris, 1925; Bibliothèque nationale de France / Copyright Pracusa

 

Unidentified Maker

Cocoon Coat, about 1929
silk brocade, silk charmeuse, and monkey fur

Cloche, about 1927
silk velvet, linen, and brass buttons

With its voluminous sleeves and dramatic diamond pattern, this cocoon coat was the height of fashion in 1920s Paris. In 1925, French fashion magazine L’art et la mode declared the lozenge the “single geometric figure” that most characterized modern feminine elegance. The fragmented planes and strong diagonals of Cubist and Futurist paintings and sculptures informed, in part, this new design vocabulary.

Considered ideal for describing the vigor and velocity of modern life, motoring coats and racing suits were often made in graphic, pointy patterns. In 1925, French couturier, or designer of luxury custom fashion, Jeanne Lanvin designed a coat in zigzag wool she called “Renault,” after the French automobile maker (see image).

Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society 2025.13-.14

designed by Jeanne Lanvin, French, 1867–1946; published by Lanvin, Paris, founded 1889; Drawing for Renault Driving Ensemble, Sport, August 1929; Patrimoine Lanvin, Paris; © Lanvin Heritage

 

Sarah Lipska,
French (born Poland), 1882–1973

Winter Sports Outfit,
Vest with Leg Warmers, 1925
wool felt and twill with braided ribbons

This vest and leg warmers are made in thick felt to guard against bracing evening drives in open-top automobiles. Polish-born artist Sarah Lipska worked with Russian designer Léon Bakst at the groundbreaking Ballets Russes before establishing her own Paris salon. Her winter costume’s bold, irregular stripes and triangle appliqués reflect the influence of the ballet company, which incorporated elements of Eastern European folk culture in its innovative, exuberant performances. French Vogue featured Lipska’s ensemble with a high-collared coat and cap in a 1925 article advising practical and chic driving clothes (see image).

Musées de Poitiers 2025.49a-c

Sarah Lipska, French (born Poland), 1882–1973; ensemble advertised in “L’Auto Encore, L’Auto Ouvert,” Vogue Paris, January 1925

 

Robert Delaunay,
French, 1885–1941

Eiffel Tower, 1924
oil on canvas

Robert Delaunay transformed the dark steel struts of the Eiffel Tower, Paris’s monument to technological progress, using bright saturated colors—orange, yellow, lavender, peach, and green. The tower’s truncated top and the maplike streetscape accentuate the aerial viewpoint. Robert and his wife, Sonia, developed their own approach to Cubism, emphasizing both the structural and expressive qualities of vivid color. Infatuated with modern machines, Delaunay’s early interest in aviation possibly informed this painting’s unique vantage point.

Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Morton D. May 536:1956

 

Sonia Delaunay,
French (born Ukraine),
1885–1979
made by Ferret Frères et Cie,
Saint Denis, France

Tissu simultané no. 1, 1924
Tissu simultané no. 26, colors 14, 1924
Tissu simultané no. 35 (variant), 1923–24
Tissu simultané no. 33, 1924
Tissu simultané no. 269p, 1928
Tissu simultané no. 187, 1926
Tissu simultané no. 186, color 4, 1926
Tissu simultané no. 201, colors 14, 1927
block-printed silk

Musée des Tissus et des Arts Décoratifs de Lyon, donated by the artist (February 1965) 2025.200–2025.207

Tissu simultané no. 60, 1924
block-printed crepe de chine

Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs, Gift of Sonia Delaunay, 1966 2025.199

Color makes the waves, spirals, diamonds, blocks, and bars of these printed fabrics wiggle and quake. Sonia Delaunay and her husband, Robert, developed a “simultaneous” color theory that expressed the syncopated rhythms of modern life through careful color pairings and placements. Unconcerned with historical boundaries that ranked forms of creative expression, Sonia worked across textiles, fashion, interiors, painting, books, and prints. Although fascinated by modern technologies, Delaunay also appreciated craftsmanship. Textile manufacturer Ferret Frères et Cie carefully printed these samples using hand-carved blocks. Delaunay’s fabrics were used in avant-garde clothing and accessories and even automotive interiors. A photograph taken around 1928 shows a model wearing a Delaunay-designed jacket opening the door of the couple’s Talbot (see image). The luxury car’s seats are upholstered in a coordinating woven textile, its prismatic pattern echoing the glint of the car’s metal hubcaps.

Model wearing coat designed by Sonia Delaunay in front of a Talbot automobile, about 1926–27

 

Sonia Delaunay,
French (born Ukraine), 1885–1979
published by Librairie des Arts Décoratifs,
Paris, France

Sonia Delaunay: Ses peintures, ses objets, ses tissus simultanés, ses modes (Sonia Delaunay: Her Paintings, Her Objects, Her Simultaneous Fabrics, Her Fashions), 1925
color illustrations; pochoir and relief process

Women in graphic ensembles are captured mid-step. Some sport light, loose dresses. Others wear cozy coats and sleek hats ideal for winter drives. Published at the time of the 1925 Paris Exhibition, this portfolio reproduced Sonia Delaunay’s watercolor designs of her fashion, textiles, costumes, and interiors interspersed with texts by leading avant-garde writers. Her vivid, vibrating colors are perfectly captured via pochoir stenciling, a labor-intensive process that produces crisp lines and rich, layered pigments.

Missouri State University Libraries 2025.31

 

Sonia Delaunay,
French (born Ukraine), 1885–1979

Maquette of Exhibition Catalogue, 1916
pochoir

Sonia Delaunay used colorful arcs and circles to create this slipcover image for an exhibition catalogue of her artwork. The paper was folded in half to make distinct front and back covers. The right side, or front cover, depicts an arrangement of concentric circles and semicircles in a rainbow of tones, forming a self-portrait of Delaunay wearing a hat. The left, or back cover, lists the artist’s name and home city of Paris, France. It also gives the name and location of the gallery in Stockholm, Sweden, where the exhibition took place. This cover demonstrates the harmonious use of color typical of Delaunay’s work from this period.

Private Collection 2022.11

 

Henri Matisse,
French, 1869–1954

The Windshield, On the Road to Villacoublay, 1917
oil on canvas

A panorama of windows frames a lush roadway near Henri Matisse’s home. Focusing on stillness instead of speed, Matisse placed his sketchbook in the driver’s seat of his 1911 Renault 6 CV, where he drafted this very painting. The closed cab allowed him to bring his studio on the road, chauffeured by his son Pierre. Matisse’s careful inclusion of its fixtures—steering wheel, door handles, klaxon horn—reflects hours spent working inside the car, observing France’s developing infrastructure as well as the new and fascinating interior world of the automobile.

The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Lucia McCurdy McBride in memory of John Harris McBride II 1972.225 2025.16

 

Fernand Léger,
French, 1881–1955

Disque dans la rue (Disc in the Street), 1919
oil on canvas

Echoes and fragments of signage, scaffolding, and streets intersect and overlap. Red and green stripes struck with seidob latem eht ffo gnihsa thgil fo tceffe eht erutpac etihw and glass panes of passing automobiles. The modern city was a favorite subject of artist Fernand Léger. While living in Paris, he embraced the fractured planes of Cubism. After serving on the front in World War I (1914–18), Léger developed his own “art of dynamic division” intent on capturing the sensorial overload of urban life, where, he proclaimed, “speed is the law.”

Private Collection 2025.48

 

Jacques-Henri Lartigue,
French, 1894–1986

Zissou Driving His “Bob On 4 Wheels” With Oléo And Louis As Passengers. Overloaded, The Bob Is Going To Crash . . . , from The Lartigue Portfolio, 1910, printed 1978
gelatin silver print

Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Frederick P. Currier 305:1995.5

Buc. (airfield) Zissou In The Backwash Of A Propeller Of An Esnault Pelterie Airplane, from The Lartigue Portfolio, 1906, printed 1977
gelatin silver print

Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Frederick P. Currier 305:1995.6

The Singer Racing Car “Bunny III,” from The Lartigue Portfolio, 1912, printed 1977
gelatin silver print

Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Frederick P. Currier 305:1995.8

Grand Prix of the A.C.F.–A Delage, 1912, printed later
gelatin silver print

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc. 2005.27.4237 2025.244

Bicycles, airplanes, and automobiles—Jacques-Henri Lartigue produced pictures from a world in motion. Dynamic diagonals and blurred landscapes convey his fascination with speed. In the early 20th century, mechanized speed emerged hand-in-hand with photography, a technological innovation that could freeze moving objects in time. Lartigue’s experiments with this new medium produced such pictures as Grand Prix of the A.C.F.–A Delage, taken in 1912. Here, he followed the speeding racecar with his camera, causing spectators to appear warped by its sheer velocity.

Whether chasing a “bob” fitted with bicycle tires by his brother, Zissou, or getting up close and personal with airplanes and race cars, Lartigue directed his lens toward movement. As a result, his photographs reveal the French automobile industry’s roots in bicycles and airplanes—as well as the unique ways people interacted with vehicles every day.

 

From the Air to the Avant-Garde

For to what can one compare speed if not to the slow thrust of thought . . . penetrating, isolating, analyzing, dissecting everything, reducing the world to a small pile of aerodynamized ashes.
—Blaise Cendrars, L’homme foudroyé (The Astonished Man), 1945

In interwar France (1918–39), automobiles embodied the efficient beauty of the machine and the exhilarating rhythm of modern life. Drawing on the field of aviation, carmakers like Gabriel Voisin prioritized material economy and lightness. Images of birds and wings on advertisements and car mascots promised driving akin to soaring in the clouds. The sensation of speed and the synchronicity of the body and technology fundamentally shaped visual perception. Artists used repetition and fragmentation to convey both the cool rationality and the chaos of factories, traffic, and blurred landscapes.

From construction methods and urban planning to novel buildings, automobiles were transforming the built environment. At the 1925 Paris Exhibition, architects Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret presented a radical home conceived, like a car chassis, as a standardized unit. An adjacent panorama envisioned the city’s Right Bank as an ordered grid of skyscrapers and highways “made for speed.” Cutting-edge showrooms and multistory garages sold and stored increasing numbers of cars. For Alfa Romeo’s new Paris outpost, French architect Robert Mallet-Stevens designed a cubist interior befitting the Italian producer’s speedy cars beloved by avant-garde painter Georges Braque and poet Blaise Cendrars.

 

Piet Mondrian,
Dutch, 1872–1944

Composition of Red and White: Nom 1/Composition No. 4 with red and blue, 1938–42 oil on canvas

Employing thick black lines and primary colors, Piet Mondrian’s distinct visual language is a hallmark of De Stijl, a Dutch art movement that used geometric abstraction to express universal order. De Stijl became popular in 1920s Paris, where designers such as Robert Mallet-Stevens and Eileen Gray brought its focus on pure form and color into the homes and commercial spaces of the Parisian avant-garde. In this painting, Mondrian achieves harmony through subtle asymmetry. The small, unbounded blocks of red and blue on the edge of the picture give it “more boogie-woogie,” according to the artist, a jazz enthusiast.

Saint Louis Art Museum, Friends Endowment Fund 242:1972

 

Robert Mallet-Stevens,
French, 1886–1945

Alfa Romeo Showroom, rue Marbeuf, Paris, France,
1926

Robert Mallet-Stevens completely transformed Alfa Romeo’s existing marble-clad garage into what French critic Marie Dormoy called a utilitarian “work of art” in 1927. Visible from the street through large windows, the showroom’s “geometric décor—red, pink, black, white, gray” included color-blocked floor tiles and walls, and stained glass by French artist Louis Barillet (1880–1948). Barillet’s illuminated ceiling sign contrasted large panels depicting a stylized car racing through a jagged landscape of quarter circles and parallelograms in the style of Fernand Léger.

At Alfa Romeo, every surface became a canvas. This approach was strongly influenced by De Stijl. Taking its name from the Dutch journal founded in 1917 by Theo van Doesburg, the affiliation of designers, architects, and painters—like Piet Mondrian—embraced pure geometric abstraction as the universal expression of order and unity.

The Alfa Romeo showroom, Paris, about 1927; photograph in René Herbst, Modern French Shop-fronts and Their Interiors, 1927

 

Ugo Zagato,
Italian, 1890–1968
Alfa Romeo Automobiles S.p.A., Milan, Italy, founded 1910

6C 1750 Spider, 1930

North Collection 2025.238

Alfa Romeo’s reputation rivaled Bugatti in the 1920s. Their P2 Grand Prix racers and 6C 1500 initiated a long line of successful racing and Sports/Grand Touring cars. Engineered by Vittoria Jano (1891–1965), the 6C 1500 was powered by a supercharged alloy, twin-cam I-6 engine.

In 1929, Alfa Romeo introduced the 6C 1750, with more power and an improved chassis. Produced from 1929 to 1933, it won every race in which it competed, including the Mille Miglia twice and the Spa 24 Hours. This example has lightweight, two-seater, open-top spider coachwork by Ugo Zagato, who got his start in aviation.

French artist Georges Braque (1882–1963) designed the coachwork of his own 6C 1500, which he later sold to his friend Blaise Cendrars (see image). The avant-garde poet’s pseudo-memoirs L’homme foudroyé (The Astonished Man) (1945) and Le lotissement du ciel (Sky: Memoirs) (1949) include bracing descriptions of his adventures crisscrossing France and South America in his speedy Alfa.

Blaise Cendrars and his Alfa Romeo at Tremblay, about 1930. (Photo coll. Miriam Cendrars.)

 

Elsa Schiaparelli,
Italian, 1890–1973

Sweater, about 1928
cashmere

Flecks of cream cashmere peek through the dark gray ground of this sweater’s geometric pattern. Armenian knitters—whose technique Elsa Schiaparelli admired—produced this tweed-like effect by carrying a lighter-colored yarn across the back of a knitted fabric, catching it behind every third or fourth stitch.

Schiaparelli’s first collections in the late 1920s featured hand-knit sweaters with sharp, high-contrast elements, such as diamonds, triangles, and zigzags. Strikingly modern, these designs reflected popular interest in form, line, and movement and allowed fashionable Parisians to wear the bold, mechanized aesthetic of the 1920s directly on their bodies.

Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio 2025.53

 

Fernand Léger,
French, 1881–1955
Dudley Murphy,
American, 1897–1968

Still from the film Ballet mécanique, about 1923–24
gelatin silver print

This photograph of Dudley Murphy’s face obscured by beams of light captures a single moment in the wildly experimental film Ballet mécanique (Mechanical Ballet). Artist Fernand Léger and filmmaker and photographer Murphy used a vortoscope, a type of kaleidoscope, to refract light and distort the film’s images.

Set at a frantic pace, footage of a woman gently swinging is interrupted by flashes of everyday objects — wine bottles, cake pans, a boater hat—and the pointed pout of French avant-garde artist and muse Kiki de Montparnasse. As the frenzy continues, carnival rides are interspliced with speeding cars. Léger later reflected, “This film is above all proof that machines and fragments of them, that ordinary manufactured objects, have plastic possibilities.”

Saint Louis Art Museum, Funds given by donors to the 1995 Art Enrichment Fund 5:1996

 

Fernand Léger,
French, 1881–1955
published by Gustav Kiepenheuer,
German, 1880–1949

Composition aux deux personnages
(Composition with Two Figures), 1920
lithograph

The bionic-like limbs of these overlapping figures take on the hard edges and luminous surfaces of their mechanized surroundings. The lithograph’s sharp shading and high contrast capture the commotion of a factory floor as shifts of light bounce off machines in perpetual motion.

This work was one of artist Fernand Léger’s first prints. After serving on the front during World War I (1914–18), Léger returned to Paris with a renewed interest in the figure and its relationship to the modern world. At the same time, he began exploring new media, including printmaking, to reach a wider audience.

Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Julian and Hope Edison 336:2020

 

Marcel L’Herbier,
French, 1888–1979

L’inhumaine (The New Enchantment) (excerpts), 1924
duration: 5 minutes, 13 seconds, looped

Both Fernand Léger and Robert Mallet-Stevens designed sets for director Marcel L’Herbier’s proto–science fiction film L’inhumaine, released as The New Enchantment in the United States. Léger’s mechanical laboratory for the protagonist, the Swedish scientist Einar Norsen, is housed inside a Mallet-Stevens–designed villa, an asymmetrical mass of rectangular blocks that cast especially dramatic shadows under studio lights. One of the film’s most spectacular scenes follows the love-anguished scientist’s suicidal drive in a Rolland-Pilain race car, ending in its jolting tumble down a hill.

FPA France, FPA Classics Collection

 

Jan Martel,
French, 1896–1966
Joël Martel,
French, 1896–1966

“Arrow” Mascot, 1925–30
Mascot for Sizaire Frères, 1925–30
“Swallow” Mascot, 1925–30
bronze

“Pigeon” Mascot, 1925–30
aluminum

Collection of Tom van Oostende 2025.57–63

François Roques,
French, 1876–unknown

“Winged Wheel” Mascot, 1925–30
“Double Circle” Mascot, 1925–30
gilt and nickeled bronze and aluminum

“Bird of Prey” Mascot, 1925–30
aluminum

Collection of Tom van Oostende 2025.57–63

The soaring speed of light is captured in the outstretched wings of birds and the sharp points of arrows. Multifaceted artists Jan and Joël Martel designed these small sculptures, called mascots, to adorn automobile radiator caps. The brothers’ aerodynamic mascot for Sizaire Frères featured prominently in the company’s advertisements (see image), which boldly claimed their cars “mock the bad roads.”

Mascots offered car owners an opportunity for personalization: “This little object very much in view in the front of the machine, such a figurehead, stands out clearly in the air, communicates a personal note to the car. It characterizes it, distinguishes it from the others and at the same time reveals the personality of its owner.”

designed by Jan and Joël Martel; Sizaire Frères advertisement, c.1930

 

Pierre Patout,
French, 1879–1965
André Noël-Noël Telmont,
French
Gabriel Voisin,
French, 1880–1973

Maison en trois jours (House in Three Days) in Art et Décoration, 1921

Equal parts airplane cockpit and summer cottage, this house combined the efficiency of industrial production with an approachable aesthetic. Before devoting himself to automobiles, Gabriel Voisin designed—with architects Pierre Patout and André Noël-Noël Telmont—this prefabricated House in Three Days. Delivered by truck, the homes were made of sheet metal that could be impressed with surface decoration. Inside, plywood walls lined with cork provided a warm setting for the simple furniture and textiles offered in the firm’s furnished examples. Although ultimately unsuccessful, Gabriel retained “the [home’s] best technical ideas for reuse in the coachwork” of his cars.

 

André-Edouard Marty,
French, 1882–1974
published by Librarie Centrale des Beaux-arts

A l’Oasis ou La voute pneumatique – Robe du soir, de Paul Poiret, plate 53 from Gazette du bon ton, Volume 2, No. 7
lithograph with hand-applied color (pochoir)

In 1919, couturier Paul Poiret asked his friend, automobile and aviation pioneer Gabriel Voisin, to design a compressed-air roof to cover his Parisian mansion’s outdoor garden theatre, the Oasis. The ever-inventive Voisin had proposed a similar concept for portable airplane hangars during World War I (1914–18), a stark contrast to Poiret’s fantastical setting.

 

Jacques-Henri Lartigue,
French, 1894–1986

Merlimont. First Flight of Gabriel Voisin in the Archdeacon Glider, from The Lartigue Portfolio
1904, printed 1978
gelatin silver print

The young Jacques-Henri Lartigue photographed Gabriel Voisin’s first flight in an Archdeacon glider at Merlimont on the northern coast of France. The daring aviator hovers over a small crowd of spectators perched high on a sand dune as he takes off on what would prove to be a short journey.

Two years later, Gabriel and his younger brother, Charles, founded Appareils d’Aviation Les Frères Voisin, the first industrial, commercial aircraft producer in France. From 1912, the company, led by Gabriel after Charles’s tragic death in a car accident, primarily manufactured planes for the French military. At the close of World War I (1914–18), Gabriel converted his factories to automobile production. Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Frederick P. Currier 305:1995.2

 

designed by Charles Loupot,
French, 1892–1960
printed by Devambez,
Paris, France, founded 1826

Voisin Automobiles, 1923
lithograph

Wafting billowing exhaust, a red open-top car roars over an arched surface in this 1923 poster for Voisin Automobiles. The illustrator Charles Loupot designed Voisin’s most celebrated advertisements. After training in lithography in Switzerland and absorbing the influences of German graphic design, Loupot, according to a 1927 critic, “evolved a very simple and striking style.” With more than half the composition left untouched but for wispy clouds, Loupot captured the lightness and efficiency of Voisin Automobiles and the brand’s roots in aviation.

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of The Lauder Foundation, Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Fund, 1988 2025.211

 

Gabriel Voisin,
French, 1880–1973
Avions Voisin,
Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, 1905–1946

C28 Aérosport, 1937

This car’s gracefully curved roofline arches like an airplane wing into a tapered fastback, reducing drag, or air resistance. Inside, a multitude of switches, dials, and gauges mimic the cockpit of an airplane. Instead of separate fenders, the coupe’s slab sides enclose the rear wheels. Designer Gabriel Voisin wrote in his memoir: “I drew the car . . . in one fell swoop [and] built the first automotive pontoons the world had ever known.”

Voisin was a gifted eccentric whose skill in aircraft production helped ensure the Allied victory in World War I (1914–18). When wartime demand for airplanes shrank, Voisin turned to automobile manufacturing, brilliantly adapting aeronautical principles in his influential cars. Like many early streamliners, the C28 retained its manufacturer’s prominent radiator grille, topped with Voisin’s winged enamel badge and a tall Art Deco mascot resembling the sculpted wings of a giant bird.

Courtesy of Deborah Keller, The Pyramids Collection  2025.288

 

Gebrüder Thonet,
Vienna, Austria,
founded 1853

Armchair (Model No. 9),
about 1904
beechwood and cane

With its curving arms formed from a single piece of bentwood, this chair exemplifies the technological advances offered by machine manufacturing. Made by the Austrian firm Thonet, it was beloved by modernists for its practicality and simplicity. Architect Le Corbusier furnished his and Pierre Jeanneret’s model house at the 1925 Paris Exhibition, the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau (Pavilion of the New Spirit), with basic storage units, laboratory glassware, and this same chair model (see image).

Conceived as a modular unit to be repeated in a neat, ordered grid across a reimagined city center, the house’s walls were plain but for cubist paintings by Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, and Georges Braque. Sculptures by Jacques Lipchitz punctuated the interior and garden. A model airplane mounted in the kitchen, a symbol of efficiency, paid homage to the pavilion’s benefactor, the aircraft and automobile manufacturer Gabriel Voisin.

Saint Louis Art Museum, Richard Brumbaugh Trust in memory of Richard Irving Brumbaugh and in honor of Grace Lischer Brumbaugh 250:1992

designed by Le Corbusier, Swiss (active France), 1887–1965; and Pierre Jeanneret, Swiss, 1896–1967; printed by A. Lévy; Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau (Interior) at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts), Paris, 1925; published in Bâtiments et jardins, cent planches en héliogravure (Paris: A. Levy, 1925)

 

Jacques Lipchitz,
French (born Lithuania), 1891–1973

The Standing Personage, 1916
bronze

This bronze figure study suggests a human silhouette, using architectural curves and corners. Jacques Lipchitz would later write about this sculpture: “It looms up like a cluster of skyscraper towers.” At the 1925 Paris Exhibition, he contributed works to the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau (Pavilion of the New Spirit) executed by his friend Le Corbusier. Here, his Cubist style merged with the architect’s powerful, stripped-back Purism.

Despite his interest in architecture, Lipchitz reiterated that this sculpture portrays a human figure. He considered the V-shaped arches splitting from the central vertical to resemble the eyebrows and nose of a face.

Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer Jr. 150:1973

 

Georges Braque,
French, 1882–1963

The Blue Mandolin, 1930
oil with sand on canvas

A mandolin, a dish of fruit, and sheet music spill from a table set against a wall textured with real sand mixed into the paint. The multiple perspectives of the contents on the table suggest rhythm and repetition, calling to mind Georges Braque’s love for music and movement. A famous devotee of Italian carmaker Alfa Romeo, the Cubist cofounder reportedly designed the coachwork of his own Grand Sport. Braque’s friend, the French painter Jean René Bazaine, confessed, “Like everyone else, I would refuse only, politely, to join him in his little sports car, which he drove, at seventy years of age, like a madman.”

Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase 125:1944

 

Le Corbusier,
Swiss (active France,) 1887–1965 published by G. Crès et cie, Paris, France

Vers une architecture (Towards a New Architecture), 1924
L’art decoratif aujourd’hui (Decorative Art Today), 1924
books

These two provocative books are part of a quartet that the architect Le Corbusier published in anticipation of the 1925 Paris Exhibition. Drawing upon articles from L’Esprit Nouveau (The New Spirit), a journal he cofounded with Belgian poet Paul Dermée and French painter Amédée Ozenfant in 1920, the books boldly assembled Le Corbusier’s most significant theories and criticisms.

In Towards a New Architecture, Le Corbusier considered the future of architecture in the era of mass production, famously juxtaposing images of automobiles and the Parthenon temple of the ancient Greeks. In Decorative Art Today, he illustrated the aesthetic and intellectual heights of machine production using a Voisin Sport, a similar model to the car he drove, pictured here.

Steedman Architecture Collection, St. Louis Public Library 2025.43, .46

Le Corbusier with his 1927 Voisin C7

 

Slow Work in Fast Times

A “collaboration of the engineer and the artisan,” French automobiles flourished thanks to advances in science and technology as well as knowledge passed down over generations. During this period, wealthy clients would buy an automobile chassis—which included the engine, wheels, and steering shaft—from a manufacturer. A coachbuilder then designed and created a custom body, which could take as much as 2,000 hours to complete.

Through patronage and partnerships, ideas moved fluidly across design disciplines. Conceived like compact rooms, coachbuilt cars borrowed the same dazzling fabrics, sumptuous materials, and creative paint treatments popular in fashion and interiors. In turn, automobiles exemplified ingenious storage and space planning, new technologies, and flexible mobility.

These reciprocal influences were in full view at the 1925 Paris Exhibition. Temporary pavilions brimmed with shimmering textiles, furniture in precious woods, gem-encrusted couture, and opulent transportation. Contributors embraced avant-garde art movements and reimagined historical craft, simplifying forms, abstracting patterns, and flattening ornamentation. France’s exploitative colonial empire, which spanned parts of Africa and Asia, was a key source of raw materials, technical expertise, and visual inspiration. The exhibition’s French title, Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, and its luxurious blend of modern aesthetics inspired the term Art Deco.

 

Paul Poiret,
French, 1879–1944
made by Poiret,
Paris, France,
active 1903–1929

Evening Coat, 1924
silk charmeuse, silk and metallic- thread brocade, and brass buttons

Loosely draped acid-green silk satin contrasts with the heavy gold brocaded sleeves and collar of this evening coat by Paul Poiret. Unstructured silhouettes realized with sumptuous textiles, bold closures, and vivid colors were trademarks of the groundbreaking Parisian couturier. This coat was owned by an equally audacious innovator, Polish American cosmetics tycoon and art collector Helena Rubinstein. An icon of the liberated, modern woman, Rubinstein was an avid motorist who famously shunned the veils typically worn by women to protect their skin when driving in open-top automobiles.

Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society 2025.08

 

Auguste Léon,
French, 1857–1942

Salon for the Péniche Poiret at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris, 1925; Musée Albert-Kahn, Boulogne-Billancourt A47193

 

Atelier Martine,
Paris, France,
active 1911–1929

Curtain Panel, about 1923
block-printed cotton with metal hardware

This cotton textile splashed with stylized flowers brims with the impossible promise of an everlasting summer. French fashion designer Paul Poiret used this textile in the splashy interior of the Amours, one of three barges he presented at the 1925 Paris Exhibition’s transport section (see image). Widely publicized reports of Poiret’s “fashion parades” staged on his “transformed” river boats reached the St. Louis Post-Dispatch within days of their unveiling.

Poiret’s interiors firm, which included a design school for teenage girls, was named after his own daughter Martine. Declared “audacious” by the Parisian press, Martine’s textiles, wallpaper, and furniture brought the the intense colors and flat patterns of Viennese modernism to French audiences.

Saint Louis Art Museum, Richard Brumbaugh Trust in memory of Richard Irving Brumbaugh and Grace Lischer Brumbaugh 26:2016

 

Raoul Dufy,
French, 1877–1953
made by Bianchini-Férier,
Lyon, France, founded 1888

La Chasse (The Hunt) Textile, 1918–19
block-printed cotton and linen

In this printed furnishing fabric, a dapperly dressed hunter, rifle in hand and hound at foot, is framed by simplified trees, flowers, and foliage. Imbuing graphic patterns with echoes of French classicism, artist Raoul Dufy’s textiles capture the Art Deco style that emerged at the 1925 Paris Exhibition. In addition to showing fabrics like this, Dufy designed a series of 13 canvases for the exuberant barges of his longtime collaborator Paul Poiret. The boats were popular but ruinously expensive features of the fair’s transport section.

Saint Louis Art Museum, Richard Brumbaugh Trust in memory of Richard Irving Brumbaugh and Grace Lischer Brumbaugh 25:2016

 

Maurice Dufrêne, French, 1876–1955
made by Cornille Frères,
Paris, France, active 1875–1926

Textile, about 1920
silk lampas

Textile, about 1920
printed silk

These textiles designed by Maurice Dufrêne hint at the colorful lozenge pattern he devised for the exterior of a limousine featured in the transport section of the 1925 Paris Exhibition. Angered over having to cancel the Paris Automobile Salon that same year, the trade union for automobile manufacturers forbade its members from participating in the fair. Coachbuilders, however, had their own union. They exhibited car bodies—featuring a riot of colorful fabrics, leather, complex wood veneers, lacquer, and creative paint treatments—on false chassis without engines and even hoods.

A designer of textiles, furniture, ceramics, and glass, Dufrêne was director of La Maîtrise, the interiors studio at the leading French department store, Galeries Lafayette. Understanding the challenges of industrial manufacture, in 1921 he acknowledged, “We desire to work for everyone, but—for such an enterprise, we must have big factories, an assured output, industrial organization, and considerable capital.”

Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs 2025.197–.198

 

Paul Léon,
French, 1874–1962;
printed by Librairie Larousse,
French, founded 1850s;

left: Illustrations of a Voiture Transformable “Saint-Didier” and Limousine-Boule by coachbuilder Henri Binder, with lacquer interior decoration by Jean Dunand, 1925

right: Limousine à Conduite Intérieure composed by Maurice Dufrêne in Ministere du Commerce, de l’Industrie, des Postes et des Télégraphes, Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, Paris, 1925

 

Jean Dunand,
French (born Switzerland), 1877–1942

Dresser Set, 1925–30
lacquer on copper, lacquer on wood, and crushed eggshell

The bright, stippled decoration on this mirror, covered box, and plateau is achieved by delicately arranging eggshell fragments on fresh lacquer. Once dry, the eggshell layer would be smoothed down and covered with a final glossy lacquer coat. In designer Jean Dunand’s studio, workers primarily from France’s colonies in Cambodia, Laos, and parts of China and Vietnam (then known as French Indochina) carried out these steps with precision.

After learning the basics of lacquerwork from Japanese artist Seizo Sugawara, Dunand began to experiment with the medium in his own workshop. His exploratory approach lent itself to striking graphic designs in furniture, jewelry, bookbindings, and even the interiors of luxurious automobiles—including two presented at the 1925 Paris Exhibition, illustrated above.

Lent by the Minneapolis Institute of Art,
The Modernism Collection, Gift of Norwest Bank Minnesota 2025.66.01–.03

 

After Jean Henri-Labourdette,
French, 1888–1972
Hispano-Suiza,
Barcelona, Spain, founded 1904

H6 Skiff Torpedo, 1925

Like a missile, this slim, powerful car is designed to cut through the air. Hispano V8 engines powered the World War I SPAD S.VII fighter plane used by the legendary combat pilot Georges Guynemer (1894–1917). The French ace’s Escadrille Cigogne (Stork Squadron) emblem became the brand’s enduring symbol, capping its radiators as a mascot and emblazoning its interiors.

The Italian-born Prince Carlo Cito Filomarino, who lived in Paris with his American wife, Emily Taylor, ordered this H6 chassis in 1925 (see image). Stored outdoors after World War II (1939–45), the original body by Million-Guiet was irreparably damaged. Maryland artisans Don Loweree and John Todd constructed a new body in Spanish cedar over white ash framing after designs by Jean Henri-Labourdette. The son of a coachbuilder and the grandson of a blacksmith-turned-carriage-maker, Henri-Labourdette had adapted elements of naval architecture to create a lightweight, torpedo-shaped body called a “skiff.”

North Collection  2025.239

 

attributed to Jeanne Lanvin,
French, 1867–1946

Evening Dress, about 1925
silk satin, silk velvet, silk net, metal-and-silk ribbon, rhinestones, glass and plastic beads, and metallic thread

Jeanne Lanvin, the entrepreneurial designer in charge of organizing the 1925 Paris Exhibition’s fashion presentations, popularized “robes de styles.” These short, full-skirted dresses recall 18th-century court fashion. The November 1924 cover of the fashion magazine Art-Goût-Beauté, pictured here, shows a woman in a similar Lanvin “robe de style” admiring a car in the Champs-Élysées flagship of Automobiles Voisin. One of the few surviving records of the showroom by French architect Pierre Patout, the image speaks to the new positioning of the automobile as a fashion accessory aimed at women buyers.

Stephens College Costume Museum and Research Library 2025.34

Cover of Art-Goût-Beauté, no. 51, November 15, 1924.

 

Callot Soeurs,
Paris, France, active 1895–1937

Evening Dress and Headache Band,
about 1925
moiré silk and metallic-thread faille, silk charmeuse, and silk net

Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society 2025.06a,b

House of Worth,
Paris, France, active 1858–1956

Evening Dress, about 1925
silk charmeuse, silk plain weave, metallic-thread lace, crystal, glass and plastic beads, and metallic thread

Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society 2025.04

Turquoise silk shimmers with watery patterns of gold; slippery silk satin falls from braids of beads and stones. These evening dresses epitomize the simplified, unstructured silhouettes and exquisite details of 1920s Parisian couture. Both Callot Soeurs and House of Worth exhibited fashions in the 1925 Paris Exhibition’s prestigious Pavilion of Elegance, where specially designed mannequins posing in opulent interiors seduced visitors from across the globe (see image).

Salon of the Callot Sisters House, Pavilion of Elegance; Musée des Arts décoratifs, Jean Collas Collection; photograph by REP

 

Édouard Bénédictus,
French, 1878–1930

Rug, about 1925
wool; plain weave with symmetrical knots

Playful blobs float apart and stick together on this jewel-toned rug, mimicking ripe fruits, blooming roses, seashells, bubbles, and paint strokes. The symmetrical swirls of teal framing the rug’s center display a subtle shift in hue from left to right, bringing even more dimension to this energetic composition.

Though known for his intricate and colorful designs, the multifaceted French designer Édouard Bénédictus also contributed to automobile production with his invention of Triplex—shatterproof glass. Its use in car windows dramatically reduced injuries and deaths from broken glass in auto accidents.

Lent by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Gift of Ruth and Bruce Dayton and The Putnam Dana McMillan Fund 2025.67

 

Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann,
French, 1879–1933

Table, about 1923
Kingwood veneer on mahogany and oak with ivory inlay

Loops of ivory create a delicate net over the top of this exquisite table. While best known for his furniture veneered in precious materials like this, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann was a multifaceted designer, often supervising every aspect of an interior. In 1921, he even designed the coachwork of his own car, which he nicknamed “La fuite,” or “The Escape” (see image). Despite his grounding in French luxury and historical styles, critics recognized that Ruhlmann’s most stripped-down designs showed the influence of modern transportation, especially automobiles.

Brooklyn Museum, Purchased with funds given by Joseph F. McCrindle, Mrs. Richard M. Palmer, Charles C. Paterson, Raymond Worgelt, and an anonymous donor 71.150.3 2025.191

designed by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, French, 1879–1933; published by Guillaume Janneau, French, 1887–1981; Panhard et Levassor Coupé de ville, about 1920; illustrated in “Le Mouvement moderne,” La Renaissance de l’art française et des industries de luxe, January 1, 1921

 

Édouard Bénédictus,
French, 1878–1930
made by Brunet-Meunié et Cie,
Paris, France, founded 1815

Les jets d’eau (Fountains) Textile, 1925
cotton and rayon

Stylized streams of water—chains of squares and triangles along with waving rivulets—form shimmering arches across this textile’s burgundy ground. Abstracted blossoms bubble up from the base of the jets in a lively floral froth. In the 1910s and ’20s, French designer Édouard Bénédictus translated natural forms into complex, geometric flat patterns for textiles, wallpaper, carpets, and inlaid leather. Presented at the 1925 Paris Exhibition, Les jets d’eau covered the walls of a grand reception room in an imagined French embassy (see image).

Saint Louis Art Museum, Funds given by The Lea-Thi-Ta Study Group 464:2018

designed by Henri Rapin, French, 1873–1939; and Pierre Selmersheim, French, 1869–1941; Grand Salon, Pavilion of the French Embassy at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris, 1925

 

Pierre Chareau,
French, 1883–1950

Desk and Stool, about 1927
wrought iron and palisander

A hinged slab of richly grained palisander, a type of rosewood, extends the writing surface of this L-shaped desk in a frictionless pivot. Architect and designer Pierre Chareau combined craft-based techniques and luxurious materials with modernist concepts of efficiency and mobility. According to a 1926 article in the contemporary art magazine L’art vivant, his ingenious designs “borrowed more and more frequently from the automobile.”

National Capital Bank 2025.21

 

Ludwig Weinburger,
Munich, Germany, 1898–1953
Automobiles Ettore Bugatti,
Molsheim, France, active 1909–1963

Type 41 Royale Convertible, 1931

At a posh dinner in 1927, a British woman remarked to Ettore Bugatti, “Your cars are fast and beautiful, but for true elegance, one must turn to Rolls-Royce or Bentley.” A miffed Bugatti immediately began developing a luxury car that would rival Rolls-Royce and Hispano-Suiza. It would be enormous in scale, utterly smooth, and whisper quiet, with a huge 12.7-liter, 300-brake horsepower (bhp) engine. Just six Type 41 chassis were built. Ordered for wealthy clients, all were bodied by prominent European coachbuilders.

Commissioned by German physician Joseph Fuchs, this cabriolet was by Ludwig Weinburger of Munich. When the Great Depression curtailed the market for expensive luxury cars, Bugatti responded to a French government request for power plants for a new high-speed passenger train. In pairs or in fours, modified Royale engines successfully powered what the French called automotrices, or self-propelled railcars. Ettore’s brother, sculptor Rembrandt Bugatti, designed the radiator mascot: a rearing elephant, its trunk extended toward the sky.

From the Collections of The Henry Ford, Dearborn, Michigan  2025.15

 

René Nauny,
French, active early 20th century,
and M. Desnet,
French, died 1933
made by La Maison Desny,
Paris, France, active 1927–1933

Tea and Coffee Service, about 1927
silver-plated brass and ebony

The precise angles and forward incline of this tea and coffee service evoke the momentum of modern transportation—steamships, trains, and automobiles. Although best known today for their metalwork, René Nauny and M. Desnet designed entire interiors for well-heeled Parisians. Working with artists like Alberto and Diego Giacometti and with talented craftspeople, La Maison Desny executed “everything: from the living room to the bathroom, from the painting of the walls to the flooring and the electrical wiring.”

Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase 58:1997a-e

 

Descriptions of Delaunay-Belleville Chassis with Carrosserie Designs by Benito, Lelong, Lepape, Martin, Ruhlmann, 1924
published by P. Draeger
lithograph

Leading up to the 1925 Paris Exhibition, the automobile manufacturer Delaunay-Belleville invited several decorators to submit sketches for coachwork that might “stimulate new forms” for the “automobile of the future.” Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann’s sleek black-and-white limousine boasted tufted upholstery; a patterned ceiling with a mesh pocket for storage; and a collapsible dressing table.

The eye-catching illustrations followed pages of detailed diagrams and descriptions of Delaunay-Belleville’s chassis that promised not only a powerful vehicle but also a comfortable and quiet ride. By harnessing the prestige of France’s decorators, Delaunay-Belleville hoped the automobile industry might one day rival that of its home and fashion sectors.

 

Henri Stephany,
French, 1880–1934
made by Cornille Frères,
Paris, France, active 1875–1926

Tissu pour ameublement collectionneur (No. 214754, Patron 11141) (Furnishing Fabric for Collector’s House), about 1925 cotton and silk “damas satin de 5”

Musée des Tissus et des Arts Décoratifs de Lyon,
donated by the Cornille brothers (1926) 2025.208

Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann,
French, 1879–1933

Side Chair, 1926
Macassar ebony, silvered bronze, and replacement silk and cotton velvet

Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Hanks  110:1972

Large, burgundy, stylized vases; floral garlands; and birds cover this cotton and silk textile. The same pattern lined the walls of the grand oval living room of the Collector’s House at the 1925 Paris Exhibition. Organized by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, the model home was filled with the designer’s elegant furniture—spare tables inlaid in ivory and precious metals, and softly rounded chairs, like this one, in rare woods like ebony. Ceramics by Émile Lenoble and Émile Decoeur featured nearby lined the shelves of its many opulent rooms.

An ambitious entrepreneur, Ruhlmann directed a bustling studio of about a hundred craftspeople and contracted a team of designers, including Henri Stephany.

 

Charles Despiau,
French, 1874–1946

Portrait of Line Aman-Jean, 1925
bronze

Drawing on ancient Greek as well as Renaissance sculpture, Charles Despiau captured the
“calm dignity,” one critic noted in 1928, of his sitter, the young Line Aman-Jean. The rough, pebbled texture of Aman-Jean’s simple clothing, repeated in the sculpting of her hair, shows the influence of Despiau’s mentor, French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Classically influenced sculptures by Despiau and his contemporaries were central features of the 1925 Paris Exhibition Collector’s House.

Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer Jr. 411:1952

 

Michel Roux-Spitz,
French, 1888–1957
published by Éditions Albert Lévy,
Paris, France

Batiments et jardins, cent planches en héliogravure, 1925
book

Steedman Architecture Collection, St. Louis Public Library 2025.44

Automobiles Voisin Advertisement Illustration, May 24, 1927
paper

Architect Pierre Patout designed the classical white building of the Collector’s House at the 1925 Paris Exhibition. The monumental figural sculpture Spring: Homage to Jean Goujon by Alfred-Auguste Janniot punctuated its large bay window and stepped roof.

Before sealing his reputation at the fair, Patout built an imposing mansion with furnishings by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann for carmaker Gabriel Voisin and his wife, Lola Bernet (see image). The Voisins purchased the much-admired Janniot sculpture after the exhibition’s closing, using the elegant faces of its three goddesses in their firm’s advertisements.

 

René Lalique,
French, 1860–1945
made by René Lalique et Cie,
Wingen-sur-Moder, France

Hagueneau Water Glass,
designed 1924
glass

Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase 16:1927

Émile Decoeur,
French, 1876–1953

Bowl, about 1920–25
glazed stoneware

Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase 14:1927

Robert Bonfils,
French, 1886–1972
published by Imprimerie de Vaugirard, Paris

A Selected Collection of Objects from the International Exposition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Art, Paris, 1925
color lithograph

Museum Archives, Saint Louis Art Museum

The simplified shapes and bold geometric ornament of this water glass and ceramic bowl may have, in theory, lent themselves to machine production. However, while the stemmed glass was manufactured using molds, the bowl is unique, its buttery, crackled surface emblematic of studio potter Émile Decoeur’s “subtle, unctuous glaze effects.” This dance between industry and craft touched all sectors of design—from tableware to automobiles.

This glass and bowl were both exhibited at the 1925 Paris Exhibition. The next year, the two works traveled with nearly 400 others to the Saint Louis Art Museum (formerly City Art Museum). The vessels were included in an exhibition organized by the United States government to inform American audiences about modern trends in Europe.

The satellite exhibition adapted the Paris fair’s poster by Robert Bonfils featuring a gazelle and woman, dressed like a classical goddess, leaping through sharp fans of grass, graphically reduced to bold, flat patterns.

 

Jean Patou,
French, 1887–1936
made by House of Patou,
French, founded 1919

Cloak, about 1926
silk crepe

Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society 2025.12

Suzanne Talbot,
Paris, France, active 1900–1950s

Evening Dress, about 1927
silk satin and metallic embroidery

Courtesy of Hamish Bowles 2025.285

The shimmering bands of gold running across this little black dress evoke the famed striped funerary mask of pharaoh Tutankhamun (reigned 1336–27 BCE). Years of extraordinary archeological discoveries from ancient Egypt fueled the imagination of French designers, with couture house Suzanne Talbot leading the charge. One author declared in 1929, “Women with Egypt in their dreamy eyes are the ultimate J. Suzanne Talbot consumers.” Georgette Henri-Labourdette, wife of coachbuilder Jean Henri-Labourdette, whose designs inspired the wood-bodied Skiff Torpedo displayed in this gallery, was counted among them (see image).

Baron Adolf de Meyer, American (born France), 1868–1946; Madame Labourdette in a Suzanne Talbot evening dress, about 1925; gelatin silver print, graphite pencil, cardstock, and velvet; 18 13/16 x 12 3/16 inches; Palais Galliera, Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris

 

Émile Lenoble,
French, 1875–1940

Jar, about 1930
glazed stoneware

Saint Louis Art Museum, Bequest of Ezra H. Linley, by exchange 61:1937

René Lalique,
French, 1860–1945
Suzanne Lalique-Haviland,
French, 1892–1989
made by Lalique et Cie,
Wingen-sur-Moder, France

Tourbillons Vase, 1926
press-molded glass and enamel

Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase 63:1930

René Buthaud,
French, 1886–1986

Vase, about 1934
glazed stoneware

Saint Louis Art Museum, Richard Brumbaugh Trust in memory of Richard Irving Brumbaugh and Grace Lischer Brumbaugh 83:2000

Bold lines and abstract patterns, achieved by molding, incising, and glazing, epitomized French Art Deco ceramics and glass. Like many of their contemporaries, ceramists René Buthaud and Émile Lenoble adopted visual motifs and techniques from non-Western artworks. Lenoble spoke of his transformative encounters with ancient Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ceramics, while Buthaud was a passionate collector of African and Oceanic art.

Unlike the two handmade ceramics, the dynamic Tourbillons Vase was press molded in parts and could be mass-produced. Suzanne Lalique-Haviland, daughter of famed glassmaker René Lalique, designed the whirling pattern, its black enamel sharply contrasting the vase’s thick, clear walls.

 

Jean Dunand,
French (born Switzerland), 1877–1942

Jeune Archer (Young Archer), 1926
wood panel with colored lacquer and eggshell

Zigzags and metallic dots decorate palm fronds and grasses—all illustrated in dark, syrupy lacquer. A young archer readies himself to release an arrow, perhaps at the sleeping lion cub in an accompanying panel. This is one of three panels produced by designer Jean Dunand for the African-themed apartment of coachbuilder Jean Henri-Labourdette and his wife, Georgette (see image).

African-inspired interiors exploded in popularity in 1920s Paris, due in part to Citroën-funded automobile expeditions across the Sahara Desert. Many expeditioners, displaying souvenirs of their trips in stylized rooms, set trends that Parisians were eager to follow.

Collection particulière, Paris 2025.196

Salon de Madame J. Henri Labourdette-Debacker, about 1927; published in “Jean Dunand,” L’Art d’aujourd’hui 13, spring 1927

 

Pierre Legrain,
French, 1889–1929

Album de 96 dessins originaux et maquettes (Album of 96 Original Designs and Maquettes), 1916–1927

book with gilt and tooled-leather binding

Bold, linear forms overlap and interplay on this scarlet leather book cover, evoking flattened pyramids; sternly shadowed buildings; and round, owlish eyes. The designer Pierre Legrain transformed 20th-century bookbinding (previously limited to delicate floral themes) by “dressing” books as if in opulent modern clothing. For inspiration, he looked to Cubism, avant-garde fashion, and art from France’s West African colonies—whose vivid, geometric motifs captivated the Parisian elite and ignited a craze for African-inspired decor. Ambitious and flexible, Legrain applied his distinctive design language to interiors, gardens, and even an automobile for French maker Delage.

Spencer Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations 2025.192

 

Jenny Sacerdote,
French, 1868–1962
made by Jenny,
Paris, France, active 1909–1937

Jacket, about 1926
silk crepe, Persian lamb fur, silk braid, metallic thread, and silk plain weave

Ombre bands flow vertically across this silk-crepe jacket, circling to form a unique and intricate pattern. Strips of iridescent color edge the sleeves and hemline, while fur trims the upright collar. With its skillfully applied embellishments and simple silhouette allowing for ease of movement and comfort, this jacket exemplifies the classic Jenny style. Establishing her fashion house in 1909, when Parisian couture was still dominated by men, Jenny Sacerdote understood, as a 1915 American Vogue article attested, the “active life most women lead.”

Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society 2025.05

 

Eileen Gray,
Irish, 1878–1976

Design for a Lacquer Screen with Incised Linear and Geometric Decoration, early 1920s
pencil, chalk, India ink, and Chinese white

This precise draft of a six-panel lacquer screen reveals the care that Irish-born designer Eileen Gray took in developing goods for her Paris showroom. Fascinated with lacquer’s sticky shine and sensuous darkness, Gray partnered with her friend and mentor, the Japanese artist Seizo Sugawara, to master its production. A Modernist, she centered shape, function, and especially material in her creations, which ranged from furniture and carpets to full architectural plans. Take a moment to imagine the gleaming, incised lines and lustrous background of this screen, which, in its final lacquered form, decorated the apartment of coachbuilder Jean Henri-Labourdette and his wife, Georgette.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London 2025.190

 

Eileen Gray,
Irish, 1878–1976
made by Tapis et Tissus de Cogolin,
Cogolin, France, active 1879–1976

Rug, 1975
cotton and wool

This “Irish green” rug, a variation on a woven design from 1926 (see image), represents the end of designer Eileen Gray’s prolific career in carpets. Permanently relocating to Paris from Ireland in 1906, Gray was initially popular for her Modernist rugs, whose simple, geometric designs were influenced by Cubism and De Stijl. Despite building her long career in France, a 1973 letter to the art critic Dorothy Walker reveals Gray’s enduring desire to return to her roots: “I should so like to have a carpet made in Ireland.”

Saint Louis Art Museum, Funds given by the Decorative Arts Society 49:1980

Eileen Gray; Irish Green Rug, 1926; National Museum of Ireland, Dublin NMIEG 2003.1641

 

Hermès,
Paris, founded 1837

Automobile Travel Blanket,
designed about 1925,
made about 1950
lambskin, cashmere, and metal zippers

Conservtoire des Créations Hermès, Paris MLM-0093 2025.227

Pocket Watch,
about 1930
lacquer and silver

Conservtoire des Créations Hermès, Paris WMG-0025 2025.225

Cigarette Case,
about 1930s
silver, lacquer, and vermeil

Conservtoire des Créations Hermès, Paris MAF-ET-0002 2025.226

Like a home on the road, high-end automobiles were outfitted with every necessity and luxury imaginable. Leatherwork specialists like Hermès offered buttery soft blankets with zippered pockets for icy hands, cushions in geometric designs for aching backs, and gloves fit with blinkers for easy signaling. The company’s tiny watches and slim cigarette cases decorated in colorful lacquer slipped easily into pockets and handbags.

 

illustrated by Georges Lepape,
French, 1887–1971
printed by Draeger,
Paris, founded 1886

Page from the Hermès Sellier Catalogue Maroquinerie, Voyage et Sport (Leather Goods, Travel, and Sport), 1926
ink on paper

Hermès Archives 2025.221

 

François Roques,
French, 1876–unknown

Patterns for Leather Travel Cushions, 1925
facsimiles

Hermès Archives 2025.222–.223

 

Optimizing Mobility

Put your plans in your pockets, come down into the street, listen to the people breathe.
—Fernand Léger, as quoted by Charlotte Perriand in Charlotte Perriand: A Life of Creation, 2003

Economic turmoil and the threat of fascism spurred the formation of a leftist coalition, the Popular Front, which swept French elections in 1936. Automobile factories centered around Paris soon became sites of labor protests. Workers demanded and won the right to bargain collectively as well as higher wages, a 40-hour workweek, paid vacation time, and amenities like changing rooms to swap work clothes for stylish streetwear. Automobile camping and road trips, immortalized by the era’s leading photographers, became powerful symbols of this new right to leisure. A push for mass mobility spurred the development of small, low-cost cars aimed especially at underserved rural consumers.

Many designers and artists embraced a socially engaged agenda. Rejecting the lavish presentations at the 1925 Paris Exhibition, a group of architects, artists, and designers formed the Union des Artistes Moderne (UAM) in 1929. Its members advocated the use of industrial production and materials, often borrowed from the automotive and aviation sectors, to bring modern design to the widest possible audience. Under their influence, the 1937 Paris Exhibition celebrated advances in science and technology with pavilions of air and electricity, and innovative buildings made of glass and steel.

 

Germaine Krull,
French (born Poland), 1897–1985

Untitled from the series Sur la route: Huit photographies prises entre Paris et Marseille ou Entre Paris et Biarritz (On the Road: Eight Photographs Taken Between Paris and Marseille or Between Paris and Biarritz), 1930
gelatin silver prints

Blurred reflections; dramatic shadows; and wide, soaring skies fill this series of photographs taken on the road. Captured by Prussian-born photographer Germaine Krull, these images depict an entirely new way of seeing the world—from a speeding car.

In 1930, Krull set out in her Peugeot 201 automobile to document a trip from Paris to Biarritz, a resort town on France’s southwestern coast. With editor Philippe Lamour in the driver’s seat, she photographed the passing terrain, even climbing atop the Peugeot’s retractable roof for a thrilling vantage point as they drove. The resulting pictures show the French landscape marked by the automobile, from deep tire tracks carved into muddy roads to trees refracted through automotive glass. For Krull, blurriness was part of the experience: “We didn’t get a single clean photo, they were all unusable, but that’s how we felt, and voilà.”

The Art Institute of Chicago, The Mary and Leigh Block Endowment Fund, 2002.63.1-.8  2025.236.01–.08

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson,
French, 1908–2004

First Paid Vacations, Along the Marne River, France, 1936
gelatin silver print

Young men playfully wrestle in the grass. A couple swims in the slowly moving waters of the Marne River. A woman tenderly cradling her baby sits beside a car grille, a tea kettle resting on its fender. Henri Cartier-Bresson captured these scenes of rest and leisure with an enchanting intimacy.

The leftist magazine Regards published photographs from this series in 1938 to celebrate the two weeks of paid vacation guaranteed to workers in 1936 by France’s socialist government, the Popular Front (see image). The accompanying article by Georges Sadoul described people quickly forgetting “factory [conveyor] belts,” some basking under improvised tents, others motor camping with the same “comfort as a cafe terrace.”

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris 2025.26–.30

Henri Cartier-Bresson, French, 1908–2004; published by Regards, Paris, 1932–1962; First paid vacations, along the Marne river, France, 1936; © Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

 

Le Corbusier,
Swiss (active France), 1887–1965
Giorgetto Giugiaro,
Italian, born 1938

Voiture Minimum, 1936
beechwood with fabric roof and upholstered seat cushions

In 1936, the French Société des Ingenieurs (SIA) sought a simple, inexpensive car with mass appeal. The architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, proposed “a minimalist vehicle for maximum functionality.” Le Corbusier called a home “a machine for living.” By extension, the automobile was “a machine for travel.” Resembling a perfect half-moon on wheels, the bold proposal did not win the competition, automakers were uninterested, and the Voiture Minimum was not built.

Fascinated by the concept, Giorgetto Giugiaro, founder of Italdesign, constructed a full-scale wooden model in 1987, claiming: “It is so full of inventive touches, that even nowadays, they are among the most advanced proposals.” Le Corbusier later said his design influenced Volkswagen and Citroën. In 1988, this second Voiture Minimum prototype was built for the opening of London’s Design Museum.

The Design Museum 2025.32

 

René-André Coulon,
French, 1908–1997
made by Saint-Gobain,
Courbevoie, France, founded 1665

Dressing Stool, about 1930
glass, iron, and oilcloth upholstery

Merging airy translucence with stability, this dressing stool features a green oilcloth seat that appears to float between curved glass panels. French designer René-André Coulon implemented recent developments in glass production to create luminous modern furniture, displayed by the glass company Saint-Gobain at the 1937 Paris Exhibition.

One such innovation was the manufacture of shatterproof automotive safety glass, which, by 1930, generated 28 percent of Saint-Gobain’s profits. Introducing new ways to temper, laminate, bend, and shape glass, this invention rapidly escaped the automotive world, inspiring other magnificent uses of glass across the industries.

Saint Louis Art Museum, Funds given by donors to the 1985 Art Enrichment Fund 86:1989

 

unidentified maker

Jacket and Pants, about 1930
cotton plain weave and buttons

These wide-legged pants and matching jacket, called beach pajamas, helped bring women’s trousers out of the bedroom and onto the streets. French designers like Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel popularized these looks following World War I (1914–18). As France’s seaside towns swelled in the 1930s, so did the demand for this breezy sportswear. A 1931 American Vogue article declared, “The lady in pyjamas is as new as flight, as sky-scrapers and television.” In 1933 the Automobile Club féminin de France reported, “This August, we’ve seen pajamas in the convertible, bathing suits in the torpedo, and bathrobes over ‘nothing-else’ in close-bodied cars.”

Stephens College Costume Museum and Research Library 2025.35a,b

 

Charlotte Perriand,
French, 1903–1999,
Pierre Jeanneret,
Swiss, 1896–1967,
and Le Corbusier,
Swiss (active France), 1887–1965

Chaise Longue, about 1930
chrome-plated tubular steel, painted sheet metal, metal springs, rubber, and fabric

This chaise longue’s arched, tubular-steel frame can be moved on its metal base to accommodate the sitter’s desired position. Architect Le Corbusier hired 24-year-old Charlotte Perriand in 1927 to oversee the firm’s furniture designs, which he tellingly called “domestic equipment.”

Perriand responded to Le Corbusier’s brief for mobile, lightweight, standardized chairs with three prototypes based on careful analysis of modern bodies and movement. Attuned to industry, she and her collaborator, Pierre Jeanneret, found the model for this chair’s lacquered sheet-metal base in the pages of an aviation catalog. Her unconventional use of materials extended to her personal life. Perriand famously wore a necklace strung with ball bearings and lit her dining room with a car headlamp.

Deeply engaged in leftist politics, Perriand left Le Corbusier’s studio in 1937 to pursue a more socially engaged design agenda.

Galerie François Laffanour Downtown  2025.25

 

unidentified maker

Sweater, about 1930
wool

Like pavement markings, pairs of black lines curve around the neck and down the front of this sweater. Well-suited to both movement and geometric designs, knitwear emerged as a fundamental element of interwar fashion, especially sportswear. Compare this sweater from an unknown maker to winter sports woolens designed by Serge Gladky illustrated here from the evocatively titled Le laboratoire de la mode, or The Fashion Laboratory.

Stephens College Costume Museum and Research Library 2025.37

Le laboratoire de la mode, Gamme de Coloris pour Lainages de Sport, Hiver 1930 Dessin de Serge Gladky

 

Jacques Le Chevallier,
French, 1896–1987
made by René Koechlin,
French, 1866–1951

Lamp, about 1926–30
aluminum and ebonite

Slices of light and shadow move across the soft, white-tinged surface of this aluminum table lamp. Lightweight and mobile, the deconstructed orb, which contains the unconcealed bulb, can be redirected on its stand in an endless variety of angles.

Although primarily recognized for his work in stained glass, between 1926 and 1932, Jacques Le Chevallier designed around 20 radical lamps. He is the best-known French designer to embrace aluminum an inexpensive, flexible material favored in automobile and boat construction—for lighting. The lamp’s producer, René Koechlin, trained as a naval architect and excelled in glider and automobile mechanics. He worked alongside Le Chevallier to research new lighting technologies and to create prototypes.

Saint Louis Art Museum, Marjorie Wyman Endowment Fund 104:2024a,b

 

Women at the Wheel

How many times have we heard this assessment: Women live only on nerves, are incapable of having composure, being decisive. The woman behind the wheel is the best argument against this bias. It is one of the most beautiful feminine conquests which confirms that we lack neither fair vision nor judgment, any more than we are devoid of composure or decisiveness.
— Lucile Grave, “L’Automobile et l’education physique,” Revue officielle de l’Automobile-Club féminin de Paris, January 1926

Like men, early women motorists were mostly members of a wealthy, adventure-seeking elite. The outbreak of World War I (1914–18), however, spurred more women to get behind the wheel of ambulances and trucks, ferrying soldiers and supplies to the front lines. This surge in women drivers mirrored their increasingly public position in French society. The scandalous 1922 Victor Magueritte novel La garçonne (The tomboy) captured the image of the sexually liberated woman who cut her hair, drank, played sports, and drove “bigger, faster” cars.

With the introduction of the more comfortable closed-body car, sleek coats and cloche hats replaced bulky motoring furs, veils, and goggles. Designers responded to women’s new active lifestyles with chic sportswear—short skirts and tops as well as dresses in lightweight fabrics and knits—appropriate for the court and the road. Evening wear remained stereotypically feminine, its gauzy fabrics and luxe embellishments resistant to day wear’s emerging androgyny.

Fashion magazines reported on motoring trends and events, marketing automobiles as an extension of a fashionable ensemble. Alluring photographs captured automobilists like “Bugatti Queen” racer Hellé Nice and St. Louis–born icon Josephine Baker, who enhanced her glamorous image with customized cars from leading French coachbuilders.

 

Madeleine Vionnet,
French, 1876–1975
House of Vionnet,
French, active 1912–1914; 1918–1939

Evening Dress, 1924
moiré silk and metallic thread

Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society 2025.02a,b

 

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, French 1883–1971
House of Chanel,
Paris, France, founded 1910

Evening Dress, Fall/Winter 1937
gelatin sequin silk net and silk crepe

Like the scales of a snake, this slinky gown covered in flexible gelatin sequins slithers and shimmers. Beginning in the late 1920s, couturier Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel introduced long, form-fitting dresses entirely encrusted in pearls and sequins. Famed
for her unconventional use of fabrics like machine-knit jersey, Chanel’s uniform application of monochromatic square sequins transformed the common evening wear embellishment into a strikingly modern textile.

Stephens College Costume Museum and Research Library 2025.36

 

Émile Deschler,
French, 1910–1991

Josephine Baker, 1935
gouache, ink, and crayon maquette

Centered within a radiant halo, Josephine Baker’s raised shoulders, short waves, and brilliant smile convey her luminosity and celebrity status. Likely sketched for a poster, this maquette, or mockup, features Baker’s black-and-white rooster-feather collar, painted in playful, gestural strokes. It resembles the one she wore while presenting her custom Delage D8-85 at a June 1935 Parisian concours d’élégance, a “competition of elegance,” showcasing coordinating fashion and automotive designs (see image). The film Princesse Tam-Tam, released later that year, includes footage of Baker attending the event.

From the Collection of Mary Strauss  2025.19

 

Louis “Zig” Gaudin, French, 1900–1936

Josephine Baker, La Grande Revue, 1930
color lithograph

Her name in bold, captivating letters, Josephine Baker is depicted dancing in a glittery costume and bright accessories, encircled by a tidal wave of peacock feathers. Costume designer, performer, and illustrator Louis “Zig” Gaudin’s dynamic composition captures the role of feathers—seductive and playful—in Baker’s iconic outfits. From the plumed skirt she donned during her first performance at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1925 to the feather-peppered “Josephine Baker Dress” she modeled for couturier Georges et Janin in 1927 (see image), Baker used fashion to subtly shape her image from dance hall sensation to icon of the “New Woman.”

From the Collection of Mary Strauss 2025.20

Josephine Baker in Nuevo Mundo, November 5, 1926

 

attributed to Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel,
French 1883–1971

Evening Dress, about 1932
metallic-and-silk lace and ostrich feathers

Stephens College Costume Museum and Research Library 2025.38

Edward Molyneux,
British, 1891–1974
Molyneux, Paris, established 1919

Evening Dress, about 1930
silk velvet and ostrich feathers

Courtesy of Hamish Bowles 2025.286

Luxurious rose-pink ostrich feathers add volume to the sleeves of this evening gown; a plunging, V-shaped back draws in the waist. 1930s couture, or custom-made high fashion, favored slimmer, more romantic silhouettes over the boyish dresses of the previous decade.

Arriving in Paris in 1919, English-born designer Edward Molyneux (Mr. Mollynooks to the British public) followed these trends expertly. His early fashions were glitzy and unstructured, like this lace dress with a feather-trimmed skirt—perfect for a visit to his Paris nightclub, where one could glimpse the American-born French starlet Josephine Baker. Later designs reimagined flamboyant feather boas and fas as a tasteful plumage on tailored gowns.

 

Henri Chapron,
French, 1886–1978
Delage,
Levallois-Perret, France, active 1905–1953

D8-120S, 1938

La Belle Voiture Française (The Beautiful French Car) was a slogan for the automobiles created by Louis Delâge (1874–1947). The Delage D8-120S, new for 1938, offered a low-slung chassis. “S” stood for “surbaissé,” or “lowered.” Company founder Delâge adored expensive handcrafted cars. The finest French coachbuilders favored the elegant Delage D8 platform to showcase their designs.

The workshop of Henri Chapron built this two-tone cabriolet with stylish coachwork that enhanced its lithe proportions. An impossibly long hood flanked by inset headlights smoothly integrated into the fenders, stretches rearward to a subtly slanted windscreen bordered by a pair of spotlights. Four external exhaust pipes, clad with chrome-plated covers, hint at the powerful straight-eight engine beneath the hood.

Josephine Baker was a friend of Louis Delâge and owned at least two of the company’s luxury automobiles—a D8-85 with coachwork ordered in April 1935 from coachbuilders Letourneur et Marchand and a factory-bodied D6 faux cabriolet (see images).

Courtesy of Linda and Paul Gould 2025.219

Josephine Baker with her Delage D8-85, Paris, 1935; photograph in L’Officiel, July 1935

Josephine Baker with her factory-bodied Delage D6 “faux cabriolet,”about 1930. Courtesy of Daniel Cabart

 

Josephine Baker Presenting Her Delage,
1933 to 1935

Arriving in Paris in 1925, St. Louis–born Josephine Baker became a sensation on the French stage and screen. In the film Princesse Tam-Tam, she plays Alwina, a woman introduced to Parisian society from Tunisia. Alwina’s appearance at a glamorous auto show is actually footage from Baker’s own life: A car enthusiast, she displayed her own Delage D8-85 automobile at a concours d’élégance (competition of elegance) in 1935, presented here.

While the film uses the event to signal Alwina’s adaptation to French society, it also represents a moment in Baker’s complex biography. A cultural chameleon, fashion icon, and vibrant personality, her confident navigation of French society reflected her own freedom of identity as much as it highlighted the stereotypes she encountered as a Black performer.

GP Archives CM 1417 and Courtesy of Internet Archive

 

Hermès, Paris,
founded 1837

“Sac-Mallette” with Toiletries, early 1950s
box-calf, bright-polished brass, Moroccan leather, chrome, crystal, silk velvet, and mirror

Gleaming containers for jewelry and cosmetics and a slim leather tool case fit snugly in this smart handbag. Introduced by the Maison Hermès in the 1920s, the “Sac-Mallette” was one of the company’s first designs aimed at car travelers and remained popular through the following decades. The sturdy base kept it upright during bumpy rides, and the expertly organized dual compartments ensured maximum storage in minimum space.

Begun as a horse harness and bridle maker in 1837, Hermès adapted its leatherwork expertise to the demands of modern transport, especially automobiles. Architect Le Corbusier spotlighted the elegant and efficient “Sac-Mallette” in his journal L’esprit nouveau in January 1925.

Conservatoire des Créations Hermès, Paris CSM-0220 2025.302

 

Elsa Schiaparelli,
Italian, 1890–1973

Sweater, about 1935
wool and leather

This deceptively simple sweater reflects fashion and the automobile’s interwoven progress in the 1930s. For long drives, stylish motorists chose soft, flexible collars, fine leather accessories; and fabrics made of wool, which naturally repels dust and resists wrinkles. Elastic knits maintained trim silhouettes while allowing for comfort and movement.

Italian-born designer Elsa Schiaparelli got her start in sweaters—her first collections presented sporty hand-knit pullovers. In the 1930s, she refined practical knitwear using textured details and unusual closures like these rolled-leather toggles, while also forming avant-garde artistic partnerships with Surrealists such as Salvador Dalí.

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Arturo and Paul Peralta-Ramos, 1955 (2009.300.2417) 2025.195

 

Jeanne Laffitte,
French, active about 1926–1929

Sport Suit, about 1926
wool twill and silk plain weave

This pleated wool skirt and tunic typify the 1920s sport suit, which comprised matching separates, often incorporating bold, geometric patterns. Its little-known designer, Jeanne Laffitte, was part of a new crop of Parisian couturiers—many women—specializing in sportswear. By the mid-1920s, clothes for the court, course, and street were hard to distinguish, much like today’s athleisure. French fashion magazine Fémina declared in 1925, “All truly modern women play sports [. . .] or pretend to be sporty.”

Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio 2025.55a,b

 

Lucien Lelong,
French, 1889–1958

Coat and Dress, spring 1928
wool plain weave with karakul [Persian lamb fur] collar Clutch Purse, spring 1928 woven leather

Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio 2025.50a-c

Cécile Marguerite,
French

Cloche Hat, spring 1928
wool felt with sterling and lapis brooch

Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio 2025.52

Unknown designer,
French

Ensemble, about 1928
wool twill flannel with kid-leather appliqués and topstitching

Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio 2025.54a–c

Lucien Lelong,
French, 1889–1958

Dress, about 1927
silk chiffon

Stephens College Costume Museum and Research Library 2025.33

With their strong diagonals, supple fabrics, and short hemlines, these clothes were made for women on the move. The young American Maud Eells (1909–1991) ordered the custom gray coat, dress, and monogrammed clutch for her wedding wardrobe, or trousseau, from Parisian couturier Lucien Lelong in 1928. Lelong constructed his fashion to reach peak chic on bodies in motion—coining the term “kinetic design” for his approach. On that same trip, Eells probably purchased the sleek ensemble patterned in jagged leather appliqués—an “unusual and smart” design both protective and cool enough for summer drives.

 

Hermès, Paris,
founded 1837

Driving Hood, late 1930s
cotton, silk lining, and box-calf

Conservatoire des Créations Hermès, Paris CPX-0360 2025.229

Coat, bespoke order inspired by AVION coat, Autumn-Winter 1935, 1935
stag leather

Conservatoire des Créations Hermès, Paris DMI-0464 2025.228

Borrowing elements from aviation attire, this belted leather coat with large pockets and fitted, canvas driving hood offered protection against similarly harsh elements encountered on the roads. Luxurious details like topstitching and silk lining hint at their couture origins. Known for its fine leather goods—from saddles to handbags—Hermès launched a sportswear line in the 1920s, catering to its active clientele. André Kertész (1894–1985) photographed French actress Blanche Montel wearing an Hermès ensemble while racing her B.N.C. for the October 1928 cover of VU magazine, featured in the case nearby.

 

Ettore Bugatti,
French (born Italy), 1881–1947
Automobiles Ettore Bugatti,
Molsheim, France, active 1909–1963

Type 35, 1927

From the slim, leather-wrapped steering wheel and aluminum dashboard patterned with “engine-turned” whorls to the tiny rearview mirror, this Bugatti Type 35 embodies the beauty of optimized efficiency. A Type 35 like this example won the Grand Prix World Championship in 1926. Factory and private teams had great success with this model, winning over 1,000 races in its era. About 635 Type 35s, 37s, and 39s were built.

This car was sold to Hellé Nice (1900–1984) in September 1929. Born Mariette Hélène Delangle, she became an exotic dancer and nude model in Paris. After a skiing accident ended her dancing career, she took up automobile racing, became a French sensation, and won races when it was unusual for a woman to compete.

Beautiful and vivacious, Nice led an exciting life, taking many lovers, adding to her fame and notoriety. Wrongfully accused of collaborating with Nazi Germany, she was eventually exonerated, but the negative publicity ruined her career.

William E. Connor Collection 2025.187

 

Hellé Nice Racing,
1930 and 1936

Mariette Hélène Delangle began auto racing in 1929. Known popularly by her stage name, Hellé Nice, her success was near-immediate. That very year, she won a women’s race in Montlhéry, France, prompting the car manufacturer Ettore Bugatti to loan her a vehicle. She used her first Bugatti to win another women’s race, this time at the Actor’s Championship Grand Prix, where she set the fastest time for both women and men.

A racing sensation, Nice drove in Europe, the United States, and even South America, but her career foundered in the late 1930s. A crash in Brazil—killing six people and putting Nice herself into a coma—was just the start; she would also be convicted in a scandal involving illegal car imports and falsely accused of being a Nazi collaborator.

GP Archives PJ 1930 008 3

 

Jacques-Henri Lartigue,
French, 1894–1986

Bichonnade, 40 Rue Cortambert, Paris,
1905, printed later

Rowe Twins, 1929, printed later
gelatin silver prints

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri,
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc. 2005.27.1647 and 2005.27.1645 2025.242–.243

Marly Forest, My Cousin Simone,
from The Lartigue Portfolio, 1913, printed 1977

Deauville: Daisy Spéranza,
from The Lartigue Portfolio, 1916, printed later
gelatin silver prints

Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Frederick P. Currier 305:1995.9-.10

Women and girls pose, play, and soar in these photographs by Jacques-Henri Lartigue. Gifted his first camera at seven years old, Lartigue spent his youth before World War I (1914–18) directing his lens at the carefree day-to-day of his of his affluent family and their friends. Here, Lartigue’s beloved cousins Bichonnade and Simone leap and tumble despite their heels and long skirts. Pioneering French tennis player Daisy Spéranza takes a swing on the court.

Lartigue’s lens remained fixed on modern women throughout his career. In 1929, he captured English twins and cabaret double act Pauline and Betty Rowe grinning at a concours d’élégance—a car and fashion competition.

 

René Lelong,
French, 1871–1933

Fémina, August 1919

Private Collection

 

Georges Lepape,
French, 1887–1971

Vogue, January 1924

Private Collection

 

André Kertész,
American (born Hungary), 1894–1985

VU: Journal de la semaine (no. 29), October 3, 1928

International Center of Photography, Museum Purchase, 2009
(2009.52.1) 2025.287

 

Tamara de Lempicka,
Polish (active France and United States), 1898–1980

Die Dame, July 1929

Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg 2025.284

 

Chic women drivers were regular features of fashion and popular magazines throughout the interwar period (1918–39). This selection includes Tamara de Lempicka’s iconic self-portrait for the July 1929 cover of Die Dame, one of four she created for the German fashion magazine. Lempicka—in a fitted driving cap, voluminous scarf, and gloves—appears as sharp and slick as her green Bugatti, epitomizing the image, however unattainable, of the modern woman. In real life, the France-based artist drove a more modest Renault.

 

Bodies Transformed

A car, like every other machine, is a recent discovery. It descends not only from the carriage but from the horse and carriage combined. The resulting product is certainly strange: a complete mechanical organism, having eyes, a mouth, a heart, and intestines; it will eat and drink and go on working until it breaks—what an odd parody of a living being.
—Alberto Giacometti, 1958

With the same uncanny presence of a robotic android, the sleek yet voluptuous automobiles of 1930s France have the unsettling allure of a machine made too sensuous. Drawing on aircraft design and wind tunnel testing, engineers concluded the most aerodynamic profile was “a drop of water in the wind.” In coachbuilders’ hands, these teardrop shapes became sculptural expressions of viscous materials shaped by environmental forces.

Artists also sought to define the vitality of matter in a modern technological world. Constantin Brancusi chipped away and sanded down sculptures in search of their essence. Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti shifted between abstraction and representation, softly blending animal, mineral, and plant forms. Fashion designers introduced flowing, streamlined silhouettes. Draped in shimmering textiles, women’s bodies became living, liquid sculptures.

Throughout the interwar period (1918–39), Surrealists blurred the line dividing nature and artifice. Photographer Man Ray and illustrator A. M. Cassandre provocatively merged body, object, and product in artistic and commercial work that mined the power of desire. In 1938, Salvador Dalí presented his Rainy Taxi, an ivy- and snail-strewn car carrying a mannequin continuously inundated with water. The automobile, a symbol of modernity’s relentless drive, became the perfect foil to Surrealist notions of the organic, dreamlike, and absurd.

 

Constantin Brancusi,
Romanian (active France),
1876–1957

Torso, 1909
painted plaster

A young woman’s hip, buttock, and thigh—creases smoothed and rounded—are centered on a neat square block. Seeking the “essence of things,” Constantin Brancusi instilled what seems at first fragmentary with the presence of the whole. Arriving in Paris in 1904, the Romanian-born sculptor established himself as a virtuosic carver, famously declining a position in Auguste Rodin’s studio to develop his own practice. In 1908, he began a series of torsos that, over time, became increasingly simplified. By 1922, Brancusi’s Torso of Young Girl, illustrated here, was a truncated and subtly distended teardrop balanced on a square base.

Private Collection 2025.69

Constantin Brancusi; Torso of a Young Girl, 1922; onyx; 13 x 9 inches; Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Lois Orswell Collection 1998.293; Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College

 

Jean (Hans) Arp,
French (born Germany),
1886–1966

Torso, 1957
polished bronze

The hips, thighs, and breasts of this undulating body are wrung out like a wet towel. While enlarged and cast in bronze in 1957, the form of this Torso was conceived in 1931 when Jean Arp first began making sculptures in the round. To achieve this organic dynamism, Arp first modeled his sculptures in plaster, adding and removing material in a process akin to nature’s own growth and decay. Like Paris-based coachbuilder Joseph Figoni, who modeled his car-body designs in clay before submitting them to draftspeople and craftspeople, Arp relied on technicians to realize his plaster sculptures in marble and metal.

Private Collection 2025.68

 

Joseph (Giuseppe) Figoni,
French (born Italy), 1892–1978

Talbot-Lago,
Suresnes, France, active 1936–1959

T150C-SS Teardrop Coupe, 1938

The sporting Talbot-Lago T150C chassis inspired open roadsters and closed cars, most notably a series of curvaceous coupes. Streamlined, sleek, and light enough to race competitively, they were called “Goutte d’Eau” (drop of water). In English, they quickly became known as the “Teardrop” Talbots.

Between 1937 and 1939, famed Parisian coachbuilders Figoni et Falaschi created 12 “New York”–style Talbot-Lago coupes, so-called because the first was introduced at the 1937 New York Auto Show at the Grand Central Palace. Skilled craftspeople spent some 2,100 hours of painstaking handwork to complete each custom body. No two Teardrop coupes were exactly alike.

In 1938, a competition-prepared T150C-SS Coupe finished third at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The first of the “New York”–style Teardrops, this is the car that Figoni registered to patent the model’s aerodynamic shape.

Collection of J.W. Marriott, Jr. 2025.47

 

Jean (Hans) Arp,
French (born Germany), 1886–1966

Shell Crystal, 1938
black granite

The animated, upturned point of this black granite sculpture resists the weight of its sinuous, slumping base—at once reaching up toward the light while being pulled down by gravity. Its beauty and strangeness encapsulate artist and poet Jean Arp’s investigation of natural forms and processes. Softly blending animal, mineral, and plant forms, Arp shifted between abstraction and representation, often suggesting embryonic development. From 1933, he called his sculptures “concretions,” which he later defined as “the natural processes of condensation, hardening, coagulation, thickening, growing together.”

Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Alvin and Ruth Siteman 705:2018

 

Ilse Bing,
American (born Germany), 1899–1998

Greta Garbo Poster, Paris, 1932
gelatin silver print

Looking up at Parisian buildings and signage, this photograph foregrounds a tattered poster of Swedish American actress Greta Garbo on a crumbling wall. German-born photographer Ilse Bing took this snapshot with a small, handheld camera two years after her arrival in Paris. The picture, a tantalizing paradox of depth and flatness, reflects the influence of her Surrealist peers. Garbo’s famously enigmatic gaze is obscured; Paris’s winding alleys are just out of view. While celebrity and the city beckon invitingly, the photographic medium makes them completely unreachable.

Saint Louis Art Museum, Funds given by the St. Louis Friends of Photography and Museum Purchase 51:2006

 

Alberto Giacometti,
Swiss, 1901–1966

Tête qui regarde (Gazing Head), 1930
white marble

An elegant white marble plaque displays two soft, oblong hollows—one vertical, the other horizontal. This sculpture’s title, Tête qui regarde (Gazing Head), implies an abstracted human form. Consider the subtle geography of this “head.” What features are suggested by its contours?

Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti ran in Surrealist and Cubist circles after relocating to Paris in 1922. Fascinated by how sight mediates and flattens the world around us, he may have produced this sculpture to materialize the vague, two-dimensional image of a face locked in memory.

Private collection 2025.212

 

Man Ray,
American (active France), 1890–1976

Dadaphoto, 1920
gelatin silver collage

Edited with French painter and sculptor Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray’s publication New York Dada included this image of a living coat rack. A woman’s nude torso, bisected by metal bars and cartoon cutouts, is paired with a box of text sarcastically bidding readers to “Keep Smiling.”

Man Ray was a central figure in modernist circles of provocateurs in New York and later Paris. Shifting expertly between media, he discovered in photography an immediate and adaptable process unburdened by aesthetic conventions. Circulating in France before his own arrival in 1921, Dadaphoto anticipated Man Ray’s enduring influence on the character of Surrealism.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc. 2005.27.4338 2025.241

 

Man Ray,
American (active France), 1890–1976

Les Amoureux (The Lovers), 1929; printed 1940
gelatin silver print

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri,
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc. 2005.27.5002 2025.240

La Prière (The Prayer), 1930
gelatin silver print

Saint Louis Art Museum, Eliza McMillan Trust 20:1986

In 1929 and 1930, Man Ray created two enigmatic photographs made of and with his lover, the American photographer Lee Miller. Les Amoureux (The Lovers) enlarges Miller’s lips until they fill the picture plane. Floating against a blown-out background, her pout becomes a grainy, glistening landscape of sexual longing frustrated by cool detachment. In

La Prière (The Prayer), Man Ray photographed a prostrate unknown woman, her fingers tangled as they simultaneously shield and caress her exposed backside. The close framing and intense light and shadows heighten the image’s air of both carnality and disembodiment. Influenced by Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s theories of sexuality and the unconscious, Surrealist imagery often distorted and fragmented women’s bodies.

 

Man Ray,
American (active France), 1890–1976

VU: Journal de la semaine,
October 1, 1933

For a 1933 cover of VU magazine devoted to the annual Paris Motor Show, Man Ray perched a woman in a red Chanel suit on the tilted bumper of an automobile. Gazing into a compact, her face and round mirror obscure its right headlamp, denying viewers the full toothy grin of its front grille. Dramatically lit, the woman’s skin and the car’s paint glow yellow as if made from the same incandescent flesh. Tempering his Surrealist lens, Man Ray moved between artistic and commercial spheres. Alluring and uneasy, his images capture the slippage between body, object, and product.

 

Man Ray,
American (active France), 1890–1976

Emak-Bakia (Leave Me Alone) (excerpts), 1926
duration: 2 minutes, 9 seconds, looped

Called a cinematic poem by its director, Man Ray, Emak-Bakia is an unpredictable collage of light and motion. The film revels in the possibilities of mechanical vision. A human eye is overlayed with the headlights of an automobile. Next, a woman takes the wheel, driving off confidently, but also blindly, the lenses of her goggles masked by images of eyes. Without narrative or route, the car—like the camera—becomes a machine for producing pure experience.

Once intoxicated by “the feeling of power which I see in the face of every driver,” by the early 1950s, Man Ray“ began to conceive a dislike for all cars including [his] own” reducing them to “necessary implements” and “consumer[s] of gasoline and rubber.”

Courtesy of Internet Archive

 

Joseph (Giuseppe) Figoni,
French (born Italy), 1894–1978
Automobiles Delahaye,
Paris, France, active 1894–1954

Type 135M Special Roadster, 1937

Acclaimed Parisian coachbuilders Figoni et Falaschi created this
siraP 7391 eht rof yllaicepse retsdaor M531 eyahaleD tnayobma Auto Salon. Its one-of-a-kind, all-aluminum body was built on a short 2.70-meter competition chassis. Designer Joseph (Giuseppe) Figoni incorporated the fenders into the body to create a singular, flowing form and adorned the hood with scalloped Art Deco–like rims that accentuate the fender curves. Although not practical for expert maneuvering, the breathtaking result resembles a Paris gown on wheels.

In 1938, this roadster was returned to the Figoni et Falaschi workshop, where its central headlight was removed. The Parisian firm Hermès reupholstered the seats and side panels in red leather. Still nicely preserved, its luscious interior has never been restored. In 2001, when Miles Collier purchased this car, it had been driven just 8,030 kilometers (about 4,989 miles).

Miles Collier Collection at Revs Institute, Naples, FL 2025.188

 

A. M. Cassandre,
French, 1901–1968

Watch the Fords Go By, 1937
offset lithograph

An enormous eye, its pupil trisected with a “V8,” invites viewers to “Watch the Fords Go By.” The Ford Motor Company tapped famed French graphic artist A. M. Cassandre to market its V8 engine, the first that was light and cheap enough to be used in mass-market cars. Exploiting Surrealist aesthetics, Cassandre’s disembodied eye becomes a potent and fragile portal to the source of desire. A hypnotic reminder of modernity’s relentless pace, Ford’s tagline would have especially stung French producers, who invented the first V8 engine back in 1902.

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the designer, 1951 2025.210

 

Jeanne Lanvin,
French, 1867–1946
House of Lanvin, Paris, founded 1889

Evening Dress, winter 1929/1930
silk faille, rhinestones, and glass beads

Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society 2025.03

“Fusée” Evening Dress, 1939
warp-printed silk taffeta and georgette-ribbon trim

Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society 2025.07

 

Glimmering rhinestones form a macabre constellation on this black evening dress, simulating a spiderweb; a slash of acid green anchors the side. On an evening gown of rich cream-and-black silk, dramatic crimson appliqués echo printed trompe l’oeil, or realistic-looking, feathers.

Renowned for intricate embellishment, designer Jeanne Lanvin evoked the dreamlike realm of Surrealism and the ethereal beauty of nature using organic forms. As designers integrated avant-garde philosophies into their works, the lines between art and fashion, nature and artifice blurred.

 

Denise Bellon,
French, 1902–1999

“Rainy Taxi” by Salvador Dalí, International Surrealist Exhibition, Paris, 1938,
printed 1984

detail of “Rainy Taxi” by Salvador Dalí, International Surrealist Exhibition, Paris, 1938,
printed 1984

“Papapillon” by Jean (Hans) Arp, International Surrealist Exhibition, Paris, 1938,
printed 2005

gelatin silver prints

At the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris, French photographer Denise Bellon snapped these pictures of works by Salvador Dalí and Jean Arp. Dalí’s display, a black taxi fitted with an artificial rain system, was parked outside the exhibition; streams of water drenched its passengers. A dummy wearing a shark head sat in the driver’s seat, and a blond shop-window mannequin covered in live snails appeared in the back. Inside the gallery, Arp’s mannequin—almost entirely obscured by a black sack printed with “Papapillon,” a nonsense word fusing together papa papillon, or father butterfly in French—joined 15 other mannequins bizarrely dressed by different artists.

Attended by thousands of Parisian elites, the exhibition highlighted the Surrealists’ fascination with appropriating aspects of the commercial landscape, such as mannequins and cars; it also confirmed Surrealism’s rising prominence in the zeitgeist.

Collection of Eric Le Roy 2025.22-.24

 

Jean Patou,
French, 1887–1936
House of Patou, Paris,
founded 1914

Evening Dress, 1931–35
silk charmeuse

Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society 2025.11a,b

Elsa Schiaparelli,
Italian, 1890–1973
Schiaparelli, Paris,
founded 1927

Evening Dress, winter 1934
lamé and metal buttons

Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society 2025.10

Madame Grès (Germaine Émilie Krebs),
French, 1903–1993
Maison Alix, Paris,
active 1934–1942

Evening Dress, about 1936
wool crepe, cut steel beads, silk crepe, and satin

Courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society 2025.09a-c

In a decade entranced by shine—from brilliant chrome and lacquered auto bodies to glossy satin dresses—Paris’s top designers produced evening wear that dazzled. Lamé, characterized by interwoven metallic threads, gives this Elsa Schiaparelli gown the gleam of precious metals. Fabrics with satin finishes, such as the bias-cut silk charmeuse used in the Jean Patou design seen here, produce a liquid glow. Carefully applied steel beads glitter hypnotically across graceful drapes—a signature element of couturier Madame Grès. These long, fluid silhouettes further hint at trends in sleek and streamlined shapes across industry, fashion, and art.