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

Henry van de Velde

Contents see photo 4.

Edition accompanying exhibition at Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen, Kunstmuseum zu Weimar, Bauhaus Archiv Berlin, Museum for Decorative Arts Ghent, Museum of Design Zurich and Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nuremberg from 1992 to 1994.

Important and extensive monograph!

Hundreds of illustrations, many in colour (see photos)

First-class condition except for 2 non-perturbing creases on the front and back cover (see photos)

Will be carefully packed with trace and insured shipping.

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"Henry Clemens Van de Velde was a Belgian painter, designer, designer and architect. Together with Victor Horta, Van de Velde is regarded as one of the most important representatives of Art Nouveau. He is also called 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 – Zürich, 15 October 1957) was a Belgian painter, designer, designer and architect.
Together with Victor Horta, Van de Velde is regarded as one of the most important 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 work
Boekentoren (University Library Ghent)
Henry Van de Velde as 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 Neo-Impressionist style (Pointillism).
When he was twenty-two, he moved to the remote Wechelderzande. The landscape and the inhabitants were the subject of his canvases for four years. His aversion to the academism of artists in Antwerp and his visit to the Barbizon artists’ colony in France led him to choose the countryside. He followed in the footsteps of painters such as Isidore Meyers and Adriaan Joseph Heymans and moved to the North Kempen. It was the latest gathering place for young artists full of "Sturm und Drang".
Wechelderzande had not yet been opened by a tram or a main road. Henry Van de Velde found accommodation in inn De Keizer, in the shadow of the Wechel church. With the influx of artists, the farmhouse with a tavern was converted into a lodging. The inn received a second floor with bedrooms and a painter’s studio. Van de Velde painted his Woman by the Window from the open window on the south side. This painting is one of a series of eight depicting impressions of village life.
The inn is currently a brasserie-restaurant named De Nieuwe Keizer. Little remains of the days of artists. The artist’s studio has disappeared; only the round-arched studio window on the north side is still visible.
In 1889 Van de Velde became a member of the artists’ group Les XX in Brussels. After Vincent van Gogh exhibited some 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 the widow of Theo van Gogh, the brother of the recently deceased Vincent van Gogh. He got a clear idea of almost the entire oeuvre of the painter and realized that 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, dedicating himself to the applied arts (metalwork, porcelain and cutlery, fashion design, carpet and fabric design) and also to architecture, including the construction of his own house in Uccle, Bloemenwerf. In his house, the furnishing and design formed an organic whole. In 1895 he designed interiors and furniture for the influential art dealership L'Art Nouveau, run by gallery owner Samuel Bing in Paris. Van de Velde’s work was also displayed in Bing’s pavilion at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1900. 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 an original form of expression. He aimed to dispel the banality and ugliness from the human mind.

In 1899 he settled in Germany. He received a number of commissions here, including for the Folkwang Museum and the Hohenhof villa in Hagen and for the Nietzsche House in Weimar. Together with Harry Kessler, he founded the Kunstgewerbeschule and the academy in Weimar, the precursor of the Bauhaus which Walter Gropius would later develop in Dessau. He also maintained a close connection with the Deutscher Werkbund.

Portrait of Maria Sèthe, Van de Velde’s future wife, 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 commission from Helene Kröller-Müller he designed a supervisor’s house and a worker’s 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 for Art History and Archaeology of Ghent University, where from 1926 to 1936 he lectured on architectural history and the applied arts. In 1933 he was commissioned to design the university library; the Boekentoren. Construction began in 1936, but the finishing took place after World War II and for budgetary reasons not entirely according to the original plans. Thus the floor of the reading room was marble and not 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 his last building on Diestsestraat between 1936 and 1942, a technical college, which between 1997 and 2000 was restored and converted 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 group of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker for the dance film Rosas danst Rosas.

Contrary to popular belief, Van de Velde was not the designer of the logo of the National Railway Company of Belgium (SNCB); the famous letter "B" in a horizontal ellipse was devised by Jean de Roy. As artistic advisor to the SNCB at the time, Van de Velde did persuade the management to choose this design. He also designed the interior of the first Belgian electric multiple units (AM35) and several carriages. Van de Velde also left his mark on the Blankenberge station.

After World War II Van de Velde was accused of collaboration. It never led to a trial, but Van de Velde went into voluntary exile; he withdrew 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 in Zürich at the age of 94 and was buried in Tervuren, near Brussels.