Title page :The Norwest Collection, Norwest Corporation, Minneapolis.

Six major design styles over this sixty year time span form the basis the Modernist Movement which embraces a diverse range of the decorative, applied and graphic arts. Starting with the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and America we progress through European and American Art Nouveau, the Wiener Werkstatte based in Vienna, the De Stijl movement centered in Holland, the Bauhaus emanating from Germany, and ending with the Art Deco movement throughout Europe and America.

During this period from 1880 to 1940 a remarkable body of gifted artist-designers produced the quintessential elements of modernist design. The roll-call of names is formidable: Galle, Lalique, Mackintosh, Horta, Dresser, Knox, Wright, Tiffany and Hoffmann all spring to mind. In a series of clearly presented essays, Alastair Duncan, brings together these disparate but connected movements under the one umbrella of Modernism. This is the first book to take a proper overview of these movements, all of which have been the subject of individual studies elsewhere, and link them together in a meaningful way.

The essays are built around full color photographs of unique and visually stimulating objects from the Modernism Collection of the Norwest Corporation of Minneapolis.

The emphasis is on three-dimensional works including metalwork, glassware, ceramics, and selected furniture as well as graphic design mainly in the form of posters. A major exhibition of the collection will also take place at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas in June 1998.