Henry van de Velde

Henry Van de Velde was born in Antwerp, Belgium, where he studied painting under Charles Verlat at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp. He then went on to a year's study with the painter Carolus-Duran in Paris. As a young painter he was strongly influenced by Paul Signac and Georges Seurat and soon adopted a neo-impressionist style, and pointillism. In 1889 he became a member of the Brussels-based artist group "Les XX". After Vincent van Gogh exhibited some work on the yearly exhibition of Les XX, Van de Velde became one of the first artists to be influenced by the Dutch painter. During this period he developed a lasting friendship with the painter Théo van Rysselberghe and the sculptor Constantin Meunier.

In 1890, Van de Velde wrote that "there will be no place in the society of the future for anything which is not of use to everyone."

In 1892, he abandoned painting, devoting his time to the arts of decoration and interior design (silver and goldsmith's trade, chinaware and cutlery, fashion design, carpet and fabric design). His meeting with Maria Sèthe, his future wife, was instrumental in this change. They collaborated on a number of projects together, including designing wallpapers and female clothing. Their first house, the Villa Bloemenwerf in Uccle, was Van de Velde's first attempt at architecture and was inspired by the British Arts and Crafts Movement. Its exterior closely resembled the Red House of William Morris. Maria Sèthe designed the garden surrounding the house.

Van de Velde also designed interiors and furniture for the influential art gallery "L'Art Nouveau" of Samuel Bing in Paris in 1895, the shop from which Art Nouveau took its name. He participated in Bing's pavilion at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900 and showed his own work.

Van de Velde was strongly influenced by John Ruskin and William Morris's English Arts and Crafts movement and he was one of the first architects or furniture designers to apply curved lines in an abstract style, rather than based on nature.

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

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

Although a Belgian, Van de Velde played an important role in the German Jugendstil.

In 1907, he co-founded the German Werkbund, an association to help improve and promote German design by establishing close relations between industry and designers. He would oppose Hermann Muthesius at the Werkbund meeting of 1914 and their debate would mark the history of Modern Architecture. Van de Velde called for the upholding of the individuality of artists while Hermann Muthesius called for standardization as a key to development. Van de Velde was a proponent of incorporating logic into all facets of design, taking inspiration from engineers application of reason and calculation.

During World War I, Van de Velde, as a foreign national, was obliged to leave Weimar (although on good terms with the Weimar government) and returned to his native Belgium. Later, he lived in Switzerland and in the Netherlands where he designed the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. In 1925 he was appointed professor at the Ghent University Institute of Art History and Archaeology, where he lectured architecture and applied arts from 1926 to 1936. He was instrumental in founding in Brussels, in 1926, today's architecture and visual arts school La Cambre, under the name of "Institut supérieur des Arts décoratifs."