This virtual exhibition is a result of testing MOVIO software in the framework of Athena Plus projec. The content is based a picture album "Secesja w architekturze Polski. Motywy. Tematy. Inspiracje" by Piotr Kożurno, Maria Śliwińska and Marek Wieczorek.published by the International Center for Information Management Systems and Services, ICIMSS. This publication was the outcome of the Partage Plus European Project focusing on Art Nouveau, an attempt to present examples of Art Nouveau architecture designed and constructed in the period of Poland’s Partitions which in itself exerted influence on the provenances of the buildings erected at the time constituting Poland’s cultural heritage.

Despite many years of interest and involvement in the area we are still far from obtaining a complete picture of Art Nouveau architecture. Gathering documentation on the architecture which is barely 100 years old is not simple as the buildings were not treated as historic monuments and, as a result, there is no related relevant information in publications. There are also no references in registers of monuments maintained by monument conservators. Majority of the monuments documented by us have been identified as a result of field research. We searched for information, both published and available in archives, to complement the photographs. Unfortunately, many of the monuments are still to be studied and examined in detail hence the varying degree if detail in the descriptions accompanying the pictures.

However, after years of undermining the value of this architecture, more and more centers undertake to write monographies of Art Nouveau monuments in cities such as Wrocław, Poznań, Łódź or even entire regions, i.e. Upper Silesia or Kujawy-Pomerania region.

There is also an increasing number of Internet sources among which the Virtual Museum of Art Nouveau http://www.muzeumsecesji.pl/ and Art around 1900 http://www.art1900.info/ are interesting examples.

On this exhibition we present selection of Art Nouveau building (churches, schools, institutions of culture, hospitals, shops, banks, factories and privately-owned villas and tenement houses.

Since our intention is to emphasize that Art Nouveau buildings or at least details are present in the architecture of virtually all cities and towns in Polish territory, a number of dedicated pages have been included. Among them are: examples of building gables, then portals, windows, and stained-glass windows. In the subsequent parts we present details of building fronts as well as interiors. After numerous attempts we have decide to classify the details not according to their types (painting, sculpture, woodcarving, etc) but according to the themes grouping them in the following manner: anthropomorphic details and mascarons, zoomorphic details, floral details, and geometric figures.
An attractive supplement of this exhibition are pages: Art Nouveau on map of Poland and World and Polish Art Nouveau on a time-line.
Users are also invited to visit out bank of pictures at www.pictures-bank.eu, which may serve not only as the basis of deepening the knowledge on Art Nouveau architecture in Poland but also as a starting point for further research.

Authors of the exhibition: Piotr Kożurno, Marek Wieczorek
Stowarzyszenie Międzynarodowe Centrum Zarządzania Informacją ICIMSS
87-100 Toruń, ul. Wysoka 16
Phone: 0048 56 653 97 40
www.icimss.edu.pl
icimss@icimss.edu.pl