Henry van de Velde

Belgium

Person

Designer

Born 3 April 1863 Antwerp, Belgium Died 25 October 1957 Zurich, Switzerland Henry van de Velde studied painting at the Koninklijke Akademie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp from 1880 to 1884. From 1886 he produced logo and book designs, and in 1888 he joined the avant-garde group Les XX. After creating his first decorative art designs, he abandoned painting in 1894 and turned to architecture, interior design and applied arts. His house Bloemenwerf in Uccle near Brussels (1895/96) became a landmark project and was followed by numerous interiors for clients including Siegfried Bing and Julius Meier-Graefe. He founded workshops in Belgium and Berlin and designed the interiors of the Folkwang Museum in Hagen between 1900 and 1902. In 1901 he was appointed advisor on arts and crafts to Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, founded the Kunstgewerbliches Seminar in Weimar in 1902, and taught at the Großherzogliche Kunstgewerbeschule from 1906 to 1915. After moving to Switzerland in 1917, he served as Professor of Architecture at the University of Ghent from 1925 to 1936 and as Director of the Institut supérieur des arts décoratifs (La Cambre), which he founded in Brussels, from 1927 to 1936. His later works included the Belgian pavilions for the World’s Fairs in Paris (1937) and New York (1938/39) and the Museum Kröller-Müller in Otterlo.