In 1933, in a tribute delivered on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Henry van de Velde, Minister Camille Huysmans declared: "I not only consider Henry van de Velde to be a great artist in his own right but also someone who paved the way for others. You are familiar with his own work. In my opinion this is founded on constructive logic which has an aesthetic effect. Van de Velde has freed us from the organic, from the superfluous, from the ornamental which is so often added without regard for the structural form, and brought us back to purity of line and clear simplicity".

This description not only sounds flattering, it is also comprehensive in its succinctness. The long and intense life of Henry van de Velde is not, however, so easily summarised. Although his journey through Europe can be neatly divided into 5 periods (the first Belgian period, a German, a Swiss, a Dutch, and the second Belgian period), his immense production (architecture, furniture, textile, ceramics, metalwork, theoretical writings) will, despite the numerous publications wich have appeared, remain a permanent source of study for many years to come.

Henry van de Velde was born in Antwerp in 1863, the seventh of eight children. The bourgeois environment in which he grew up (his father was a chemist) originally suggested that the young Henry was set for a respectably middle-class career. A taste for adventure soon indicated that his life would take a quite different course: that of art. Although he was interested in music (the composer Peter Benoit was a friend of the family) he opted for the academy. In 1881 Henry van de Velde enrolled at the academy of his home town. He took courses in different kinds of drawing. At the request of the director of the academy Charles Verlat, he continued his studies at the latter's private studio. He was later to say of his years of at the academy: "miserable and wasted years. Academic education is inevitably oppressive and sterile. It is too far removed from the adventure and independence wich are the very essence of art."

When in 1884 he came across Manet's "Bar aux Folies Bergère" at an exhibition in Antwerp he was so moved by the work that he asked his father's permission to go and study in Paris. At the age of 21 he left for Paris to study at the studios of Bastien-Lepage and Carolus Duran. Although the Barbizon School held a great fascination for him, he was nevertheless to return to Antwerp disillusioned. At the suggestion of the painter Emile Claus, he paid a visit to the village of Wechelderzande, where the most famous Belgian luminists had settled. Originaly intending to make just for short stay in Wechelderzande, he finally remained there for 4 years. It was here that van de Velde came into real and close contact with rural life, a taste of wich he had already had in Barbizon. He wrote an essay while he was there entitled "Du paysan en peinture" (a historical, aesthetic and social analysis) and also produced a series of paintings and pastel drawings. His sojourn in Wechelderzande undoubtedly had an important influence on the subject matter of van de Velde's work. He himself wrote: "In the solitude of the Campine villages I became increasingly drawn to reading and reflection wich distanced le irrevocably from the anti-social forms of painting and the life of the artist as I had previously known it. Only someone who renders himself useful to everybody is really usefull, that is the message I received from both my heart and my understanding".

During his painting and drawing period, van de Velde was naturally bound to the flat surface, in which he endeavoured to organise a harmonious an animated expression. Later such aspiration was to shift from the flat surface to the treatment of the spatial in his architecture and applied arts. Despite the quality of his drawings, we are continually confronted with the evolution of van de Velde's understanding of aesthetics. In 1884 he consequently decided to abandon drawing and painting once and for all. In the autumn of 1888, van de Velde joined the Brussels group of artist. "Les XX" (the twenty), the way opened up to new spheres of interest and a broader field of activity. Although at first the salons of "Les XX" exibited only paintings, from 1890-91 they displayed a wider interest in the applied arts. Jules Cheret presented posters, Walter Crane Children's book, Gauguin his first exhibition of ceramics and A.W. Finch in addition to his painting, his first experimental ceramic plates. It was also at about this time that Brussels became one of the first cities in continental Europe to pick up on the production of the English company, Liberty. A shop belonging to the "Compagnie japonaise" sold Liberty varnished tables, fabric carpets, glassware and dinner services. It was no doubt A.W. Finch who first introduced Henry van de Velde to the thinking of Ruskin and Morris. Van de Velde was particulary attracted to social aspects of their work and their struggle for the art to be totaly integrated into everyday life in society through arts and crafts. The personal contact which van de Velde had, from 1886 onwards, with leading socialists such as Emile Vandervelde and Max Hallet made him particulary sensitive to the relationship between art en society.

1893 was to be an important year for Henry van de Velde, both artistically and personally. In the winter of 1892-93 his embroidery designs:"Engelenwake" (the angels watch) were produced by an aunt of the artist (and presented at what was to be the final salon of "les XX" in 1893).

At a party given by the painter Theo Van Rysselberghe he met a young apprentice of the artist. Her name was Maria Sethe, the daughter of a prominent industrialist from Uccle ((Brussels). Learning of his interest in arts and crafts, the young lady offered to supply him with information from London on current trends in English art. In this way Henry van de Velde was able to present an early collection of works in steel, and pieces representative of the progressive English applied arts. When, from Oktober 1893, he began lecturing two hours a week at the Antwerp Academy he used his own material to illustrate his points. In his autobiography van de Velde spoke about his teaching at the Academy: "On the basis of the reproductions and the original copies which I possessed, I studied the various branches of art and crafts and the development of the various techniques wich had recently made the transition from the manual to the mechanical. A revolution had taken place when not even the strongest opposition from Ruskin, whose paradoxical, eccentric attitude served only to diminish the strength of his protest, had been able to halt. It was unjust to blame the machine for the ugliness. It was however just to denounce the base avarice of the industrialists who - thanks to the machine - were able to mass produce the monstrosities wich had previously been handmade and flood the world markets with them. It is a fact that in the future their reputation would depend directly upon the aesthetic and moral value of the products manufactured in their factories."

These lessons, together with his courses at the "New University" of Brussels, where he gave a number of lectures on "The industrial arts and ornamentation" were to form the basis, in 1884, of his first publication: "Dèblaiement d'art" (33 pages in a limited edition of 150 copies). This was a typographical masterpiece and an ardent plea for a return to an art wich "requires the sacrifice of personal vanity and the overcoming of the contempt with which artistic pursuits of a functional nature have been treated. We wear ourselves out, creasely trying to laugh in an atmosphere of tedium".

In the meantime, on 30 April 1894, Henry van de Velde married Maria Sethe. The young couple went to live with Maria's mother. He was commissioned by his mother- in- law to take his first steps into the world of architecture: he undertook some alternations in the small family villa. Also on the instructions of his mother- in- law, van de Velde completed his first work of applied art: furniture for his sister-in-law Irma. Shortly afterwards Mrs. Sethe presented her son- in- law with the chance of making his dream come true by providing him with the means to build his own house on an adjoining plot of land: the BLOEMENWERF (1895-96), so- called in memory of a country house he had seen while on honeymoon in the Netherlands. Without any architectural training Henry van de Velde produced a work of architecture wich was a reflection of his theoretical concepts: a radical departure from any historical style, the expanding of the living areas wich stood in a relationship of organic unity, sobriety of design and above all an all- encompassing unity of architecture and applied art. Today it is a work which speaks for itself, although in 1895 it was a subject of derision and controversy. Despite some outwards resemblance to an English "cottage" the Bloemenwerf was considered an exceptionally revolutionary work. In van de Velde's opinion it was above all the logic and simplicity wich surprised both the public and the architects: "the unusual façade, the format and the lack of symmetry in the windows and the shape of the roof could probably have been forgiven. The lack of a specific external statement could not, especially as neither a shortage of funds nor a concern for economy was the explanation." The first architectural work of Henry van de Velde can certainly not be regarded as perfect. As an example of plastic art it leaves something to be desired and it is in marked contrast with Hogenhof for example (Hagen 1907). Bloemenwerf is above all a forceful statement in which Henry van de Velde gives a practical expression to the theory of his art. A theory wich can be expressed in two central concepts: rational design and strength of line, with which he made a radical departure from any imitation of historical styles. In Bloemenwerf, Henry van de Velde not only constructed the house with strict accordance with rational principles but he also designed the furniture: "I thought about everything which was unburdened by sentimentality and which stood before me in the purity of the simple creation of our understanding. The furniture of our house seemed perfectly clean to me, not remotely overloaded, as fresh as a remote corner of a bright valley. In its purity it seemed to defy all the clutter of the antique shops. The bright, polished ash and the ingenious details of the construction delighted both the eye and the spirit. Today it wouldn't astonish anyone, but at the time it created a sensation".

The sensation grew, fired by an exhibition of the Bloemenwerf furniture at the salon of "La libre esthétique" in 1986 (which replaced "Les XX" after 1894, under the inspired management of Octave Maus, and also in Paris, where Siegfried Bing wanted to set up "L' art Nouveau" following the example of the Brusssels "La maison d'art (1894)". Bing's plan for the first exhibition involved a clear departure from the stand and window presentation of the time: he wanted to present the works of art in a variety of salons and interiors which would show them off to their best advantage. In 1895 Bing invited Henry van de Velde to furnish four rooms of the new house in Paris: a large dining room, a smoking room in Congolese wood, a small cabinet in lemon wood and a rotunda with furniture and matching wall decorations. The exhibition caused a scandal and met with a largely critical response, not least because the exhibitors, and especially van de Velde, made a definitive break with the prevailing French taste. In a dialogue in his "journal" the work of Henry van de Velde prompted the following bitter comments from Edmond de Goncourt: "No - is this to be the future of French furniture? - no and no again."

The commotion surrounding van de Velde's designs was heard as far afield as Germany where a delegation from Dresden, which was looking for works to be included in the 1897 "Dresdner Kunstgewerbe Austellung" and decided to visit the "L' Art Nouveau" in Paris. They immediately invited Henry van de Velde to exhibit his four Bing interiors in Dresden, toghether with a new design entitled "Ruheraum". In contrast to the Paris exhibition, van de Velde' s work was greeted with general enthusiasm.

Dresden 1897 signifies the starting point of Henry van de Velde's career in Germany. His German period constitutes without any doubt the absolute high point of his work, as regards both quantity and quality. Influential figures in van de Velde's first German commissions include Julius Meier Graefe (art critic and publisher of the magazine -'Decorative Kunst' (1897) and L' Art décoratif (1898), Harry Graf Kessler and Baron Eberhard von Bodenhausen, woth wealthy art-lovers who were good friends and members of the editorial staff of the magazine 'PAN'. In addition to the space they gave to van de Velde in their respective magazines (he published, for example, a controversial article in PAN in 1897 in "Entwurf und Bau moderner Möbel" and the first issue of "L' Art décoratif" (October 1898) was devoted entirely to his work) They were also his first German patrons: van Bodenhausen commissioned him to repare the advertising material for his company "TROPON" and to design his own furniture, Harry Kessler commissioned him to design furniture for his own house in Berlin and Meier Graefe the interior design of his "La Maison Moderne" in Paris. In the meantime von Bodenhausen had also raised the capital to set up a 'société van de Velde' in Ixelles, Brussels where Henry van de Velde could organise his own production of his design for furniture. Owing to the increase in orders from Germany (including shop layouts for the Habena company of Berlin and work for the folkwang museum in Hagen) the workshops in Ixelles soon encountered organisational and economic problems (customs, transport) and in the winter of 1900-1901 it moved to Berlin. In October 1900 van de Velde decided to move to Berlin himself, taking his family with him. In the meantime he had produced designs for the Krefeld silk industry wich was having to counter severe competition from Lyon. They hoped to capture the progressive section of the market by giving their products a new aesthetic style. In Berlin van de Velde noticed a great contrast between the official art and the progressive new trends in the visual arts, literature and music. He was disappointed by the lack of interest shown by industrial circles and above all by his collaboration with the Berlin company, Hirschwald, for his furniture designs. During his Berlin period van de Velde did however produce one of his most important works: the alternations to the Folkwang Museum in Hagen (1900-1902). Although van de Velde was only appointed as the designer by Karl Ernst Osthaus on completion of the structural work he was nonetheless able to instill the building with a greater plasticity. He himself commented: "I attempted to draw profiles which would match the beams and metal skeletal structure of the building. The problem I had to solve seemed to be that which is found in nature itself, that is, the relationship between the skeleton and the flesh. In this respect the problem of covering a metal skeleton seemed both healthy and normal". The sobriety of style as we know it from the Bloemenwerf furniture was slowly abandoned after 1896 (the first commission from Bing). More and more luxurious materials were used and the sinusoidal curve began to make its appearance.

This resulted in a total unity in the furniture with an indistinguishable fusion of construction and ornamentation. The furniture is characterised by a play of active dynamic lines wich give unity to the whole. This achieves a coherence of the constructional concept and the ornamentation. The ornamentation does not function as decoration in itself but has an almost didactical role as a functional element in space. There are two ways of obtaining a symphonic harmony of these two possibilities: either by eliminating al the decorative elements in order to retain solely the pure form of the furniture (as van de Velde did in his early works, and which he was to repeat in a perhaps even more pure form in the later stages of his work), or by achieving a more subtle style wich accentuates the essential constructive elements. In the period 1897-1905 van de Velde opted for the latter solution: a desk is above all and in all a work table, and all elements of the furniture serve his function. The same also applies, for example, to seating where the curved armrests are an allmost irresistible temptation to lean back and relax. His furniture from this period like an invitation to use the object in question and represent a reconciliation between functionalism and expressive styling.

There is a balanced unity between construction and ornamentation, in which it must however be clearly stated that the structuring form takes precedence over decorative effect.

In the meantime Henry van de Velde was invited by the Grand Duke Wilhelm Ernst, who, in 1901, succeeded to the throne of the Grand Duchy of Sachsen-Weimar. At the time the industry of the Grand Duchy was experiencing economic difficulties owing to the competition from better-equipped and more favourably situated German companies. In Weimar van de Velde was commissioned to instill new life into the declining industries and met with succes with the Burgel pottery, the Tannroda basket weaving plant (whose produce included woven furniture) and the Rhula pipe factory. His responsibilities also extended to conducting the "Kunstgewerbliche Seminar" where he trained artists in preparation for their activities in arts and crafts workshops or in the art industry. In this way van de Velde attempted to bring toghether artists, craftsmen and manufacturers: "I had already achieved such a cooperation six years before the founding of the Werkbund and twenty years before the Bauhaus".

The Weimar period was a mixture of high points and critical situations, typified by violent criticism or absolute rejection of his work. In 1902 for example the German Kaiser Wilhelm II refused to visit a room furnished by van de Velde at the "Düsseldorfer Industrieausstellung". The exhibition room (as a prototype for a planned museum in Weimar) which he presented at the "Dresdner Kunstgewerbeaustellung" was strongly criticised in the press. The theatre project for Louis Dumont was rejected by the official Weimar court theatre. His designs for the Paris "Théatre des Champs-Elysées" (1910) were not produced, although they were partly incorporated in the plans of the French architect Perret. More succesfull was the building of the Villa Esche in Chemnitz (1902), the Villa Leuring in Schevingen (the Nederlands) (1902), his own house "Hohe Pappeln" (1902) (in Ehringsdorf, Weimar) and "Kunstschule" (1904) and the "Kunstgewerbeschule" (1906-1907).

An absolute high point was, however, the "Hohenhof" house commissioned by K.E. Osthaus in a suburb of Hagen (1906). Here van de Velde succeeded in giving the immense villa an orderly concept of the space. The harmony with the wooded setting was obtained by a broad rounding of the concerns, the use of natural stone and a diversification of roofing. Osthaus later described the concept as follows: "It becomes clear from this work that van de Velde bases his designs more on the plastic modelling of the body than the concavity of space. This is the clue to his affinity with the Greeks and his aversion to the designs of the Renaissance. The Hohenhof bears witness to his endeavours to grasp the cube as such, particulary in the rounding off of the corners of the upper storey on the east façade, in the bulging of the bay windows in the bathroom, and the high point of the roof. Even the design of the chimney in the outbuilding is a confirmation of his plastic sensation. Conversely, none of the courtyards and gardens show any leaning towards the formation of space. The animation of the material is sought not in the breathing tension between body and space but in the dynamic expression of the mass."

After the unfortunate experiences of the Louise Dumont theatre and the Paris Champs-Elysées theatre, van de Velde was, however, to succeed in seeing one of his designs for a theatre realised. On the banks of the Rhine he designed a theatre for the German Werkbund. In the face of initial opposition to his project (owing to his foreign nationality), he finaly received the commission in February 1914 thanks to the support of the Mayor of the city of Cologne, Conrad Adenauer. Five months later the theatre opened: it was not only remarkable for the exceptional plasticity of the façade but also caused quite a sensation owing to the technical innovations: a hall in the shape of an amphitheatre, an independent proscenium, a rounded background and a stage in three sections.

The Werkbund exhibition was also to be the platform for a vigorous exchange of ideas: at the annual meeting of the Werkbund in 1914 this led to heated discussions between van de Velde and Muthesius on the relationship of art and industry, or more specifically: the relationship between the artist and the standarisation. The German Werkbund was set up in 1907 in Munich with the object of bringing toghether artists and industrialists with a view to achieving a harmonious development of the technical and the aesthetic of German "Arbeit".

The founders of this organisation included, in addition to van de Velde and Muthesius, Peter Behrens, Jozef Hoffman, Jozef Olbrich and Richard Riemerschmid. In the founding manifesto it was stated that: "there are no fixed borders between a tool and a machine. Quality products can be produced either with the aid of a tool or a machine, provided that people use the machine as a tool." The Werkbund also planned to incorporate the creativity of the artist in industrial manufacture, whereby the end-product would have both "a content of sensitivity and an artistic implication."

Muthesius, without doubt the most stimulating force behind the Werkbund, had allready, in 1907, proposed that Peter Behrens should work as an artist for AEG in Berlin. Henry van de Velde did not want to sacrifice his artistic freedom to the demands of industry.

Similarly, he seemed to be still attached to the traditional arts and crafts. However he had also himself at times worked in the service of industry: for the porcelain manufactures of Meissen, Jena and Copenhagen he had designed services where he had clearly conformed to the laws and norms of mass production. The different insights of Muthesius and van de Velde were bound to lead to a polemic, which was expressed in Cologne in 1914. Muthesius defended the case of standarisation, whereby the artist contained a universal relevance giving rise to generally accepted criteria of taste. Van de Velde, supported by Obrist, Endell and Bruno Taut, responded with an uncompromising: "As long as there are artists in the Werkbund they will oppose any proposal for a norm of standardisation. The artist is in his heart of hearts an ardent individualist, a free and spontaneous spirit. He will never voluntarily subject himself to a discipline wich impose on him normes and types".

The succes of the Werkbund theatre was however to be short-lived: in August 1914 the first World War broke out and the exhibition centre was used as barracks. In the meantime van de Velde had already given notice of his departure to the Grand Duke of Weimar, weary of the intreagues of the neo-Biedermeier court and the associated conservative artistic circles. His friend Kessler had already fallen victim to these circles and had lost his post as director of the Weimar Museum trough presenting "scandalous" drawing of nudes at the Rhodin exhibition. The outbreak of war prevented van de Velde from leaving Weimar (as a foreign he had even had to report to the police three times a week) and doomed him to a period of artistic inactivity. In 1917 he was finaly able to leave for Switzerland, where he had numerous contacts with artists and intellectuals in Bern and Zurich (incluiding Kirchner, Masereel Romain Rolland). He was only to resume his artistic activity when the Kröller-Müller couple (who ran a shipping company) asked him to work for them in 1920 in the Netherlands. He built a house for himself in Wassenaar near the Hague (1921): an impressive prefabricated wooden construction, erected by the company Christoph and Unmack from Niesky (Silesia). He replaced the Dutch architect H.P. Berlage.

In addition to a number of minor works van de Velde was principally busy with plans for the Kröller-Müller Museum. The task was far from simple: to errect a building in a beautifull nature park (De Hoge Veluwe) to house the Kröller-Müller collections (paintings, statues, porcelain). The plans which van de Velde produced between 1921 and 1926 could not however be realised owing to the financial difficulties experienced by the Kröller-Müller shipping company.

The project was however realised at a later date in a simpler form (the first part in 1937, with an extension in 1953). Despite the great sobriety of the architecture, this museum stands today as one of the best examples of pre-war Museum architecture. Van de Velde created attractive rooms, one merging into the next, wich, thanks to a sensitivity choice of natural lighting, looked out upon the surrounding natural beauty. In 1925 van de Velde returned to Belgium, at the invitation of King Albert and Camille Huysmans, the Minister of Art and sciences. His first task was to set up the Institute of Decorative Arts at the former Abbay de la Cambre in Brussels. Until 1935 he remained as the director of the school, where he was able to relive his experiences from the Weimar Kunstgewerbeschule. In addition to building yet an other new house for himself, ("La nouvelle maison" at Tervuren, just outside Brussels) and a number of commissions from private individuals, he worked principally for the Goverment: as artistic advisor Belgium Railways and for the Navy as chairman of the artistic commitees of the Belgian pavillons at the World exhibitions of Paris (1937) and New York (1939). But his major work from this second Belgian period is without doubt the building of the university library of Ghent (from 1936). In the large book towers and reading rooms and offices of the library van de Velde achieved a truly exceptional purity of form. The rational, a constant feature of his work, excludes all ornamentation: a purity of line and corners binds the building in a strictly rational whole.

Just at the first World War marked the end of his Weimar period, so the Second World War once more put an end to his artistic production. This time for good. He left Belgium in 1947 and set up home in Oberagerij, Switzerland. He did not build his final home himself: he moved into a house built by the architect Alfred Roth in 1939. It was there that he wrote his "memoires" and in 1957, at the age of 94, died in a Zurich hospital. His journey through Europe was over. Despite a succession of hostile and contradictory circumstances van de Velde had nevertheless relentlessly pursued what he himself referred to as "the holy way" in order to achieve his goal: by strength of soul and intellect, to overcome imitations of style by offering genuinely new creations. In this respect the message of Henry van de Velde is still of significance to us all today.