Kalenderblad maart met bloemen before 1904

Anna Sipkema made this calendar page for March with lithography. Although undated, the artist was active in the first decades of the 20th century. Sipkema lived and worked in a period that saw the rise of the Art Nouveau movement, and this calendar page provides a clear example of this style, both through the sinuous decorative lines, and the use of floral motifs. It was a time of huge shifts in artistic institutions, as artists sought a new public role in the creation of posters, books and other everyday images, but these images and how they were distributed also say a lot about the social conditions of the time. Sipkema worked in the Netherlands, a country with a strong trading history, and the development of printed media was an important aspect of a society that valued literacy and the circulation of images. To understand this image better, it is useful to look at archives of printed ephemera from this period, and also to study the history of design and the decorative arts. Only then can we begin to appreciate the interplay of art, society and commerce.