Recognized for its beautiful and ornate shapes, full of curves and contracurves, Rococó is the style that strongly characterized eighteenth-century Europe, prior to the break that the French Revolution generated .
Origin and development of the Rococó style
According to specialists, the Rococó style is a legacy that leaves in Europe, especially in Catholic regions, the Baroque of the previous period. Thus, you can easily find a connection to the previous artistic style that represented many of the characteristics that, with the Rococó, will have a much more marked exacerbation.
Rococo arose and developed with great force in the 18th century, from around 1710 to 1789, when everything abruptly ended with the revolutionary impulse. With its headquarters of origin and consolidation located in the French country, Rococo also had a presence in some parts of Spain and England, although with different characteristics. At its core, Rococo was a style and a way of thinking about the world, very typical of European aristocracies that, completely isolated from the reality of crisis that was taking hold throughout the century, locked themselves in a world of fantasy, luxury and ostentation.
Main elements that characterized the time
If we want to define the Rococo style we must point out two or three fundamental elements. On the one hand, its delicacy and fragility that differentiate it from the previous period or Baroque that took much more drastic and dark elements. In general terms, Rococo was defined with a taste for pastel and light colors that contributed to that image of delicacy and very feminine beauty. Figures, silhouettes and shapes used to be very convoluted, with curves and counter curves that also filled spaces infinitely (for example, in the case of an upholstery).
Rococo differed from other previous artistic styles in Europe in that it had a strong presence in arts that were historically considered minor. Although we find very significant painters and sculptors from this period, they have not gained as much fame as those of the Renaissance or Romanticism . On the other hand, painting and sculpture, traditional arts gave way to arts such as textiles, porcelain, interior decoration, etc.
The intricate social functioning of the Rococó
It is impossible to understand this artistic style if it is not accompanied by its historical context. Here we must say that Rococo characterized an era in France and Europe that was beginning to show some serious cracks in the political and social order.
While the monarchies and Churches began to be deeply questioned, the aristocracies were understood as guilty of all the economic erosion suffered by the public treasury and hence the enormous economic crises, all elements that were united in the bottleneck that represented the French Revolution .
