Original art by Louis Comfort Tiffany (Tiffany art glass), Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Alphonse Mucha, Lucien Pissaro, Emile Galle’, Pierre Bonnard, and other historically significant artists of the Art Nouveau period have been incorporated into Spalt’s unique collaged resin-topped bodies. In a special arrangement with Klein Acoustic Guitars (noted pioneering luthier Steve Klein) the bodies are shaped as Klein’s unique acoustic guitar body silhouette, joined to handmade Brazilian rosewood necks.

In addition to the original Art Nouveau art, the collaged resin-topped bodies, Klein’s eloquent body silhouette, and the exotic Brazilian rosewood necks, the instruments will feature custom-to-this series Fralin pickups with specially coloured bone tops, Klein acoustic-styled bridges, handmade tuner buttons, and a variety of other subtle thematically consistent aesthetic touches.

Years of design, as well as careful and costly art selection precede the release of The Nouveau Series, enhancing its stature as one of the rarest and most artful collections of electric guitars ever offered. The instruments will be provided with custom-to-this series cases, along with a letter of provenance.

Born and raised in Austria, Michael Spalt began honoring his interest in the arts when at the age of ten he began making daily treks to The Film Library Museum in Vienna where he poured over American underground films from the 1950s and 60s. His family had a strong tradition in the arts as his architect father was also Dean of The Academy for Applied Arts, also in Vienna.

His connection with the guitar began in the early 70s when he was moved by Progressive British Rock and the San Francisco scene of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. It was during these teenage years that he also made his first two guitars.

After a brief stint at the Film School in Austria he headed to the San Francisco Art Institute where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with emphases on painting, photography, and film. This was followed by three years at the Academy for Applied Arts in Austria where he studied painting. It was during this period that he became quite moved by the Abstract Expressionists - Matisse, Kandinsky, Malevich, and the Dada collages of Kurt Schwitters. Spalt connected with their textural approach, their sense of colour, form, and line.

In the mid-80s he moved to Los Angeles to work in film. It was here he created screenplays, and worked as assistant director, editor, camera operator, and in set design/build. During this period he began building guitars as an outlet to deal with his frustrations, as he soon came to realize that Hollywood had little interest in art films.

The instruments he began creating were an offshoot of his fine art enthusiasms. His first instruments featured textured surface decoration to add depth and life to the bodies. The medium of the collaged resin-topped bodies was a natural evolution of that same interest in texture and depth. Spalt was also drawn to things that had been in use and then discarded - he felt they carried a story, a charge, a life of their own, and he liked how that intersected with the idea that a guitar really needs to be played in order for it to come alive.

Art of Music’s Paul Schmidt explains:
“I had long been a fan of Steve Klein’s guitars, (Schmidt wrote a book about Klein - “Art That Sings”, Doctorow Communications, 2003), and when Steve and I co-curated an exhibit of guitars for the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art in 2001, I learned of Michael Spalt’s guitars. Both Steve and I thought his designs were at once artful and amazing. I then had the notion to see if the design of Steve’s smaller-bodied acoustic could generalize to an electric guitar, and thought it would unite beautifully with Michael’s artistry. I took an original Klein neck and had Michael make a body comprised of parts from Klein’s shop from the past thirty years collaged in his unique resin-topped style. The instrument turned out beautifully and we featured it in the book about Steve (p. 77 in the Klein book).

Then, while studying the history of Tiffany stained glass I came across an interesting-to-me anecdote about how Siegfried Bing (early champion of Art Nouveau in France and owner of Maison del l’Art Nouveu - the gallery that featured artists that worked in the then-new style preceding the turn of the 20th century) had commissioned Louis Comfort Tiffany (originator of Tiffany stained glass) to produce ten windows to designs by nine of France’s leading artists including Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre Bonnard.

I thought it might be interesting to do something similar by wedding original Art Nouveau art with the medium of Michael Spalt’s technique utilizing the shape of Klein’s acoustic guitars. With the instrument I’d commissioned as a prototype, the concept for The Nouveau Series was born.