E A Seguy

When considering the art that emerged out of the Art Neuveu and Art Deco periods, several elements typically come to mind: heavy line work, meticulous design, and vivid color, for example. Most people are content to revisit the work of Alfons Mucha as the pinnacle of that era, and leave it at that. That is because they have not been exposed to the understated beauty in the work of Eugene Alain Seguy. Seguy worked in France primarilly as a textile pattern designer, but made numerous books of illustration along those same designs, all surrounding a single topic: bugs. The books of illustration, 'Insectes' and 'Papillons' are masterpieces in themselves, depicting butterflies and other insects with a vivid, scientific accuracy that makes Audubon look like a talentless hack. Beside this, the composition technique of clustering the different creepy crawlies together on each page is unnerving and claustrophic, reminding the viewer that bugs are in fact everywhere, in colors and numbers we cannot begin to fathom.

This is one of his patterns based off a beetle: