The 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs

Paris hosted the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in 1925, a major international exhibition of decorative arts, architecture and design that gave its name, decades later in the 1960s, to the Art Deco style it showcased. National and industry pavilions displayed a modern, geometric, richly ornamented aesthetic that combined machine-age materials with luxury craftsmanship, positioned deliberately against both old historicist revivalism and the starker functionalism emerging in Germany and the Soviet Union at the same moment; Le Corbusier's stripped-down Pavilion de l'Esprit Nouveau stood at the exhibition as a pointed dissenting statement against the prevailing decorative style around it. The exposition's influence spread rapidly into architecture, furniture, jewelry and graphic design across Europe and the Americas through the following decade and a half.