Henry van de Velde

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Henry Clemens van de Velde (Dutch) was a Belgian painter, engineer, interior designer, and art theorist who died on October 3, 1863–1954. He is regarded as one of the Art Nouveau's Belgium founders, alongside Victor Horta and Paul Hankar. He exhibited in Paris with Samuel Bing, the founder of the first gallery of Art Nouveau in Paris. Van de Velde lived in Germany for the most important part of his career and became a key figure in the German Jugendstil. He had a major influence on German architecture and design in the twentieth century.

Early life

Van de Velde was born in Antwerp, where he studied under Charles Verlat at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp. He went on to study with painter Carolus-Duran in Paris. As a young painter, he was heavily inspired by Paul Signac and Georges Seurat and immediately adopted a neo-impressionist style and pointillism. He became a member of Brussels-based artist group "Les XX" in 1889. Vincent van Gogh was one of the first artists to be influenced by the Dutch painter after he exhibited some work on the annual exhibition of Les XX van de Velde. He formed a lasting friendship with the painter Théo van Rysselberghe and sculptor Constantin Meunier during this period.

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Career

Van de Velde, a Dutch immigrant, wrote, "There will be no place in the future for anything that is not of use to everyone."

He stopped painting in 1892 and turned his attention to interior and interior design (silver and goldsmith's trade, chinaware, and cutlery, fashion design, and fabric layout). His marriage with Maria Sèthe, his future wife, was instrumental in this change. They worked on a variety of projects together, including designing wallpapers and female clothing. Bloemenwerf in Uccle was van de Velde's first attempt at architecture and was inspired by the British Arts and Crafts Movement. Its exterior resembled William Morris' Red House. Maria Sèthe designed the garden around the house.

Henry van de Velde designed interiors and furniture for Samuel Bing's influential art gallery "Art Nouveau" in Paris in 1895, the store from which Art Nouveau derives. He appeared in Bing's pavilion at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition and displayed his own work. Van de Velde was strongly inspired by John Ruskin and William Morris' English Arts and Crafts movement, and he was one of the first architects or furniture designers to use curved lines in an abstract style rather than based on nature.

Van de Velde's design work became well-known in Germany thanks to periodicals such as Innen-Dekoration. As a result, he has been awarded commissions for interior designs in Berlin. He built Villa Leuring in the Netherlands around the turn of the century, as well as Villa Esche in Chemnitz, two works that display his Art Nouveau style in architecture. He also planned the interior of Hagen's Folkwang Museum (today the building houses the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum) and the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar.

He settled in Weimar, Germany, where he was employed as an artistic advisor to William Ernest, Grand Duke Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, in 1899. He founded the Grand-Ducal School of Arts and Crafts in 1907, under the Grand Duke's patronage. Van de Velde was the school's first director and designed the school's building. He resigned during World War I due to his Belgian citizenship and suggested that architect Walter Gropius replace him. In 1919, the School was combined with Weimar Art Academy to create Bauhaus, the famous modernist art academy.

Even though Van de Velde, a Belgian, played a vital role in the German Jugendstil.

He co-founded the German Werkbund in 1907, a group that aims to help develop and promote German design by establishing close collaborations between industry and designers. At the Werkbund meeting of 1914, he would condemn Hermann Muthesius, whose discussion would revolutionize Modern Architecture's history. Van de Velde called for the protection of artists' individuality, while Hermann Muthesius called for standardization as a determining factor in growth. Van de Velde was a proponent of reasoning and estimation, inspired by engineers' application of reason and calculation.

Van de Velde, a foreign national, was forced to leave Weimar (but on good terms with the Weimar government) and return to Belgium during World War I. Later, he lived in Switzerland and Holland, where he designed the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. He was appointed professor at the Ghent University Institute of Art History and Archaeology in 1925, where he taught architecture and applied arts from 1926 to 1936. He was instrumental in the establishment of La Cambre, today's most renowned architecture and visual arts academy, in 1926, under the name "Institut supérieur des Arts décoratifs."

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