One Hundred Years of Art Deco: Paris Celebrates a Century of Geometric Glamour
There's a particular kind of light that bounces off lacquered macassar ebony. Warm, deep, almost liquid. It's the kind of surface that makes you want to reach out and touch it — and then stop yourself, because you know this piece has a hundred years of stories embedded in its grain.
That tension between desire and reverence is exactly what Art Deco has always been about. And right now, Paris is celebrating one hundred years of it.
The Musée des Arts Décoratifs — right next to the Louvre on rue de Rivoli — has opened "1925-2025: One Hundred Years of Art Deco," a sweeping exhibition running through April 26, 2026. It marks the centenary of the legendary 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, the event that gave the movement its name and drew sixteen million visitors to the banks of the Seine.
This is not a dusty retrospective. Over one thousand works fill the galleries — furniture, jewellery, textiles, posters, fashion, architecture — tracing Art Deco from its origins in 1910s France through its international explosion and into contemporary reinterpretations. Masterpieces by Jacques-Émile Ruhlmann, Pierre Chareau, Eileen Gray, and André Groult anchor the show. Groult's famous shagreen chest of drawers is here. So is Chareau's spectacular desk-library, originally designed for the French Embassy and reassembled for this occasion.
The scenography itself recreates the elegant atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties, including full-scale mock-ups of the new Orient Express — set to relaunch in 2027 — blending 1920s craftsmanship with modern luxury. It's immersive in the truest sense.
For anyone who loves vintage design furniture, this exhibition is essential context. The geometric precision, the luxurious materials, the obsessive attention to craft — Art Deco laid the groundwork for everything that followed in mid-century modern and European design. Understanding where Ruhlmann's ebony meets Chareau's steel is understanding the DNA of the pieces we curate at Vintz every day.
If you're in Paris before late April 2026, make time for this one. It's the kind of show that changes how you look at a chair.
Discover the exhibition on the Musée des Arts Décoratifs website.