Art Déco Week is coming soon, featuring 40 itineraries and seven talks exploring modern Italia
The programme for the first edition explores the connections between cities, buildings and key figures in the arts during the 1920s and 1930s. From major urban centres to seaside and spa resorts, the tours – led by qualified tour guides – will enable visitors to discover iconic locations, decorative details and examples of the transition from Art Nouveau to Art Deco, right through to the Novecento and Rationalist movements.
The countdown is on for Art Déco Week, the new festival which, from 18 to 24 November, will explore Art Deco through architecture, the decorative arts, painting and travel culture, with the shell as the central theme of this first edition.
With forty guided tours across nineteen Italian regions and a series of seven online scientific conferences, the event – organised by the Italia Liberty Association and conceived and curated by Andrea Speziali - was launched the experience of Art Nouveau Week, which will reach its eighth edition in 2026. The new project extends its research into shifts in taste between the two world wars, linking places with artistic production, objects and visual communication. The first edition takes place in Italia, with in-depth analyses that open up the discussion to the international scene.
The programme showcases the diversity of this season through a dialogue between Art Deco, lingering influences of Art Nouveau, eclecticism, the Novecento movement and Rationalism. The tours are designed to highlight similarities and differences, recognise the interplay between architectural styles, and observe how new forms are incorporated into public architecture, hospitality spaces and domestic life.
The shell as a metaphor for artistic transformation
The central theme of this edition is the shell: a natural form which, reinterpreted through fans, radial patterns, symmetries and geometric patterns, allows us to trace the journey from the observation of nature to decorative synthesis. The theme accompanies the story of a style that spans ceramics, glass, iron, furnishings, graphic design and fashion, right through to the construction of the modern image of women.
“Art Deco Week was created to take a step forward in history,” explains Andrea Speziali. “After years spent exploring Art Nouveau, it was only natural to ask what came next. Art Deco is not simply Art Nouveau stripped of its ornamentation. It is a different conception of modernity. Women, cities, speed, advertising, the way we travel, furnish our homes, communicate and even conceive of luxury are all changing. We want to begin telling the story of this transformation by starting with the places themselves.”
