Poiret was a principal figure in the artistic revolution known as Art Deco (a name taken from the 1925 Exposition International des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels). After completing school, he began an apprenticeship with the couturier Jacques Doucet in Paris, and by 1903 he opened his own fashion house. In 1911 he founded the École Martine, an art school. Unlike traditional European art academies, the school encouraged young women to design in total creative freedom. To further their creativity, Poiret's students took trips to the botanical gardens, the aquarium, and the countryside, where they made sketches of plant and animal life to use in their designs. From these designs, textiles were produced for fashion, upholstery, curtains, wallpaper, carpets, and all types of home furnishings. Poiret, whose own creative genius took the form of liberating women's wear from its corseted past, invented many of his own textile patterns. This print of parrots sitting in tree branches combines his love of bold fantasy and brilliant color. The simplicity of the repeated imagery gives emphasis to the vivid yellows and salmon pinks. Poiret's affinity for orientalism and for the exoticism of the Ballets Russes as well as for the brightness and gaiety of contemporary painters such as Matisse is superbly demonstrated here.
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<P>Poiret was a principal figure in the artistic revolution known as Art Deco (a name taken from the 1925 Exposition International des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels). After completing school, he began an apprenticeship with the couturier Jacques Doucet in Paris, and by 1903 he opened his own fashion house. In 1911 he founded the École Martine, an art school. Unlike traditional European art academies, the school encouraged young women to design in total creative freedom. To further their creativity, Poiret's students took trips to the botanical gardens, the aquarium, and the countryside, where they made sketches of plant and animal life to use in their designs. From these designs, textiles were produced for fashion, upholstery, curtains, wallpaper, carpets, and all types of home furnishings. Poiret, whose own creative genius took the form of liberating women's wear from its corseted past, invented many of his own textile patterns. This print of parrots sitting in tree branches combines his love of bold fantasy and brilliant color. The simplicity of the repeated imagery gives emphasis to the vivid yellows and salmon pinks. Poiret's affinity for orientalism and for the exoticism of the Ballets Russes as well as for the brightness and gaiety of contemporary painters such as Matisse is superbly demonstrated here.</P>
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