Birgit Schulte & Klaus-Jurgen Sembach - Henry van de Velde - 1993

Henry van de Velde

Contents see photo 4.

Publication accompanying the exhibition at the Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen, Kunstmuseum zu Weimar, Bauhaus Archive Berlin, Museum for Decorative Arts Ghent, Museum of Design Zurich and Germanic National Museum Nuremberg from 1992 to 1994.

Important and extensive monograph!

Hundreds of illustrations, many in color (see photos)

First-rate condition except for 2 non-intrusive creases on the front and back plates (see photos)

Carefully packed and shipped with track and trace and insurance.

Good luck with the bidding!!

"Henry Clemens Van de Velde was a Belgian painter, designer, formgiver and architect. Together with Victor Horta, Van de Velde is considered one of the most important representatives of Art Nouveau. He is also known as the ‘apostle of functionalism.’

"Henry van de Velde" is a book by Birgit Schulte & Klaus-Jurgen Sembach. It was published by Pandora. This edition appeared in 1995. The work comprises 464 pages. It is written in Dutch.

Henry Clemens Van de Velde (Antwerp, 3 April 1863 – Zurich, 15 October 1957) was a Belgian painter, designer, formgiver and architect.
Together with Victor Horta, Van de Velde is regarded as one of the leading representatives of Art Nouveau. He is also called the “apostle of functionalism.” From the early years of the 20th century, he played a leading role in architecture and the decorative arts, especially in Germany.

Life and works
Book Tower (University Library Ghent)
Henry Van de Velde as a painter
Van de Velde studied painting with Karel Verlat at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and with painter Carolus-Duran in Paris. He was deeply influenced by Paul Signac and Georges Seurat and painted in a neo-impressionist style (pointillism).
When he was twenty-two, he moved to the remote Wechelderzande. The landscape and its inhabitants were the subject of his canvases for four years. His aversion to the academism of artists in Antwerp and his visit to the French artist colony of Barbizon led him to choose the countryside. He followed in the steps of painters such as Isidore Meyers and Adriaan Joseph Heymans and moved to the North Camp. It was the newest gathering place for young artists full of “Sturm und Drang.”
Wechelderzande was not yet connected by a tram or a main road. Henry Van de Velde found shelter at the inn De Keizer, in the shadow of the Wechelse church. With the influx of artists, the farm with inn was converted into an accommodation. The inn received a second floor with bedrooms and a painters’ atelier. Van de Velde painted his Woman at the Window from the open south-facing window. This painting is one of a series of eight that depict impressions of village life.
Today, the inn is a brasserie-restaurant named De Nieuwe Keizer. Few remnants of the artists’ days remain. The artists’ studio has disappeared; only the round-arched studio window on the north side is still visible.
In 1889 Van de Velde joined the artists’ group Les XX in Brussels. After Vincent van Gogh exhibited some of his works at the annual Les XX exhibition, Van de Velde became one of the first painters influenced by Van Gogh. During his honeymoon in the Netherlands, he visited Theo van Gogh’s widow, Vincent van Gogh’s brother. He got a good idea of almost the entire oeuvre of the painter and realized he would never reach that overwhelming level. For him, this marked the end of his career as a painter.

Henry Van de Velde as designer and architect
From 1892, Van de Velde left painting and devoted himself to the applied arts (metalwork, porcelain and cutlery, fashion design, carpet and fabric design) and to architecture, including the construction of his own house in Uccle, Bloemenwerf. In his house, the furnishings and design formed an organic whole. In 1895 he designed interiors and furniture for the influential art dealership L'Art Nouveau, run by the gallery owner Samuel Bing in Paris. Van de Velde’s work also stood in Bing’s pavilion at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris. Van de Velde was influenced by the English Arts and Crafts movement with John Ruskin and William Morris, and was one of the first architects and furniture designers to work in an abstract style with curved lines. He opposed copying historical styles and chose a decidedly original form. He sought to expel banality and ugliness from the human spirit.

In 1899 he settled in Germany. Here he received several commissions, including for the Folkwang Museum and the Hohenhof villa in Hagen and for the Nietzsche House in Weimar. Together with Harry Kessler, he was the founder of the Kunstgewerbeschule and the academy in Weimar, the precursor of the Bauhaus, which would be further developed by Walter Gropius in Dessau. He also maintained a close relationship with the Deutscher Werkbund.

Portrait of Maria Sèthe, the later wife of Van de Velde, 1891, by Théo van Rysselberghe. It was through the painter that Van de Velde and Maria Sèthe met.

During the First World War, Van de Velde stayed in Switzerland and the Netherlands. On behalf of Helene Kröller-Müller, he designed a supervisor’s house and a workers’ house in Schipborg (building permits dated 1921), next to the farm De Schepbord designed by architect Hendrik Petrus Berlage in 1914. Van de Velde ultimately designed the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, which opened in 1938. In 1925 he was appointed to the Higher Institute of Art History and Archaeology at Ghent University, where he taught architectural history and applied arts from 1926 to 1936. In 1933 he was commissioned to design the university library; the Boekentoren. Construction began in 1936, but the finishing work took place only after World War II and, for budgetary reasons, was not completed according to the original plans. Thus the floor of the reading room was made of marble rather than black rubber, as Van de Velde had actually wanted. Van de Velde was also involved in the construction of Ghent University Hospital.

In Leuven he built, on Diestsestraat, between 1936 and 1942, his last building, a technical school, which between 1997 and 2000 was restored and transformed by architect Georges Baines into the Municipal Library and City Archive, De Tweebronnen. The original building served in 1997 as a backdrop for the choreography with minimal music by Rosas, the group of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, for the dance film Rosas danst Rosas.

Contrary to what is often thought, Van de Velde was not the designer of the logo of the National Company of Belgian Railways; the famous letter “B” in a lying ellipse was conceived by Jean de Roy. As artistic advisor to NMBS, however, Van de Velde did persuade the management to choose this design. He also designed the interior of the first Belgian electric trains (AM35) and several carriages. Van de Velde also left his mark on Blankenberge station.

After World War II, Van de Velde was accused of collaboration. There was never a trial, but Van de Velde went into voluntary exile; he retreated to Oberägeri in Switzerland, where he wrote his memoirs, which appeared posthumously in 1962 under the title Die Geschichte meines Lebens.

Van de Velde died in 1957 at the age of 94 in Zurich and is buried in Tervuren, near Brussels.