Thanks to William Morris (1834 – 1896), a common man's house became again an object deserving an architect's attention. The arrangement of a building's interior spaces and the furniture, from a chair to a mirror, began to be a subject of artistic imagination. This is something which we take for granted in today's times, but one hundred years ago or, to be more exact, since the Renaissance times, it had not been much evident at all. Very few artists shared Morris' views. Henry van de Velde (1863 – 1957) was one of them. He was one generation younger than Morris, yet this "age gap" allowed van de Velde to become a real pioneer of modernism. From the very beginning he preferred the idea of art created by machine, to hand-made art. It is worth stressing that the contradictory views on the problem of a machine in fine arts divided entire artistic societies in many European art centres at those times.

Van de Velde did not know Morris. However, van de Velde's aesthetic views must have surely been inspired with Morris' thoughts. It was reported by the historians of art, for example Nikolaus Pevsner and by van de Velde himself. We read in his declaration in the first volume of his works, published in Berlin in 1901: "The seed that has inspired our minds, has given an impulse to our activity and has started off a complete revival of form and ornamentation in fine arts, this seed was with no doubt sown with John Ruskin's and William Morris' influential contribution." Therefore, it can be assumed that van de Velde was, like Morris, concerned about the fine arts' future and he did not want artistic creation for the very few. He opted for democracy in access to it and he wanted fine arts to be shared by everyone. He expressed these thoughts and ideas after his experiences with neoimpresionist painting which was his first unfulfilled artistic love. The artist was once and for all discouraged from painting because it was exclusive and did not attract large audience. In fact he wished to do something which would be available not only for the few experts. This is the phase of his personal doubts when he might have discovered the works of Morris and other artists from his circle. It was surely the proof that van de Velde wanted to keep his artistic work close to everyday life. In this case it meant breaking with easel painting which used to be the nineteen century model of artistic activity, and turning to applied arts. I suppose, this is why van de Velde at the age of 30, being an open-minded person and feeling the need of dialogue, turned towards design and architecture which gave him more possibilities of individual fulfillment and abilities to participate in the social dialogue. A similar suggestion was expressed in Pevsner's excellent work about the pioneers of the contemporary times.

In the 1890s trends leading to thorough revision of the architecture forms and the revival of fine arts were very common. The necessity to break with ecclecticism was very strong. Henry van de Velde's article "Déblaiement d'art" ("Art Clearing") published in 1894, was one of the first ones describing the new style. He opted for rejecting the redundant ornaments, both literally and metaphorically, and he also declared introducing pure structure which would be able to express states of human mind, like sadness, joy and feeling of safety. The article also expressed van de Velde's belief in a machine as a creator of a new kind of beauty.

Two years ago in 1892 an exhibition had been opened in Brussels which reflected new trends of fine arts. The group of artists contributing to the exhibition (van de Velde was one of them) demonstrated that they were aiming at simplification of the architectonic detail and all the forms of interior architecture as well as of the outside shape of the object. It was understood as limiting the richness of the interior ornaments, rather than getting rid of an architectonic detail in architecture. This trend can be observed in van de Velde's project of Folkwang Museum in The Hague in 1901. Some years later, when writing about the participants of that exhibition van de Velde described their style in one word: "novelty - this is the feature that describes and judges the work of these four artists". It must be remembered that Art Nouveau was one of the common terms referring to secession. Similar elegant simplifications were made by van de Velde in his furniture designs.

About 1895 the new style called scession was dominant in all the fine arts, architecture, painting, sculpture, printing, jewellery, furniture and clothes design. It had been a long time since the artists of various branches cooperated with each other to create the style which would be so universal. At the same time, many of them did not focus only on their own art branch but they were also successful in other related branches like painting and graphic art, or even branches seemingly distant from each other like architecture and furniture design.

Henry van de Velde was one of the artists who was aware of the spirit of the modern times. However he is mostly recognized as a reformer of the artistic craft and interior architecture. This opinion is not fair enough as we should not ignore van de Velde's great contribution to the development of architectonic forms, especially in the period before the first world war. On the other hand, this opinion can be caused by the fact that interior architecture became a regular fine arts branch for the first time for many years. This was the reason why the artists' attempts were special and many project realizations turned out to be outstanding events. Van de Velde's works were among them, too.

From the contemporary position we can think that secession was the movement expressing fear against the industrialization of life and a reflection of the artists' protests against the expansion of technology. Respecting and coming back to crafts were the signs of rejecting the industrial forms, and extreme individualism stood in opposition to unification. However, unification gave way to the new aesthetic canons and revealed the social sense of architecture. It was a style full of inner contradictions. Secession often had its origin in rationalism of the modern technique but it also referred to the world of fairy-tale and romantic fantasy. Secession is said to have been the shortest period in the history of European fine arts. It is sometimes said that secession was a synonyme of bad taste. According to other views secession never declined, but instead, due to the technical changes in the epoque, it turned into forms corresponding to the contemporary times. This statement is also in agreement with the works and aesthetic views of Henry van de Velde. Although in fact his concepts were rejected, in some cases they can have been developed as trends of secondary importance, but they were also remarkably continued by Erich Mendelsohn, a German, and Michael de Klerk, a Dutch artist.

The development of van de Velde's aesthetic thought can be divided into two periods: secession (Art Nouveau) and functional period (modernism). Functioning among the artists of his generation, the great Belgian architect represented without any doubt the ideas of his time. As a creator he partially belonged to this trend, and his further works had more in common with the modernist movement of the beginnings of the 20th century. It seems that the project of the building in Trzebiechów stands at the point of intersection of these two trends. Although it contains some secession accents, it is directed into functionalism and comes before further modernist solutions.

His own new doctrine of beauty hidden in machines exposing "the giant move of their iron arms" stressed the necessity of integrating form with the nature of applied material. Van de Velde believed that a new category of beauty can be created, providing he would stand by the constructor steering the machine. The analogies to the world of technique and using its nomenclature is a characteristic feature of the spirit of those times. The second volume of his lectures, published in 1903, contains similar expressions: "engineers at the doorstep of new style", "engineers are the architects of today". Functionality of the interiors and the furniture was the most important feature for van de Velde. Simplifying the ornament exposed the functional aspect, and the shape of the object was to be derived from its function. Van de Velde wrote about it: "We need the logical structure of the objects, consequent logics in handling the material, sincere and proud demonstration of the creative processes". It is worth mentioning that although making analogies to technique and using the word "engineer" rather in the metaphorical sense, as a creator rather than a mechanic, van de Velde did not refuse the artist the right to be original and individual. This will be his standpoint during the famous argument with Muthesius. In the meantime, at the beginning of the 20th century, he predicted that iron, aluminium, steel, linoleum, celluloid and concrete would be the materials of the future. Referring to furniture and other household utensils he stressed the necessity to return to the long ago forgotten inclination to "lively, bold and bright colours, clear forms and rational construction". Besides, he was in favour of the English furniture for their "systematical eliminating of decoration".

Let's go back to Herman Muthesius, a very important personality for the German and European modernism whose doctrine of "relevance of form and its relevance to the character of the material" helped to discover beauty in simplified forms and which used to be the fundamental idea of new trends in the architecture of the end of 19th century. It can be easily noticed that Muthesius' thought is very close to van de Velde's opinions. However, their opinions about the range of the creative skills allowed to the artist became dramatically clashing. It was disclosed during their famous argument in Cologne in 1914, during the Deutsche Werkbund meeting.

Muthesius opted for standarization, while van de Velde was in favour of individualism. Muthesius convinced: "Both architecture and the whole area of Werkbund activity go toward standarization. Only thanks to standarization these branches can be respected again, like it used to be during the epoques of harmonious development of civilization. Only standarization, as a "blessed" concentration of powers can create the universal and generally recognized sense of taste". Van de Velde despairingly contradicted: "As long as there are artists in the Werkbund they will oppose to any suggestion of 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". These two artists opinions are quoted in the Pevsner work. This was a crucial argument and all the authors of the books about contemporary architecture refer to this discussion.

Let us remind that during the time when this argument took place, Henry van de Velde was the director of the Weimar School of Artistic Craft, whose staff and the director himself, were in favour of the idea that designing is an individual process and the artists cannot be forced to follow strict rules. Van de Velde was a devoted individualist until the end of his active artistic and pedagogical career. His students were made to create new forms following their intuition, not the traditional solutions.

In 1914 van de Velde resigned from the post of the director of the School. It did not happen because of the artistic reasons, but due to the growing nationalistic atmosphere in Germany. Therefore, Van de Velde pointed out at his three followers. Walter Gropius, one of them, took over his post. Van de Velde resigned, but the new style had already been created. The style of the twentieth century was created before 1914 and the Belgian artist contributed to that. This is the opinion of many art critics. Later on this style became more popular and "legal" thanks to the activity of Bauhaus, which was managed by Gropius in 1919 after the fusion of the Academy of Arts and the School of Artistic Crafts.

It is worth considering why – against many facts – we are more inclined to associate van de Velde with the history of Bauhaus, which is regarded to be the most important centre of creative activity in Europe, rather than with his achievements in the area of secession. It seems that these opinion are not much wrong, either. Gropius' concepts of integration of arts under the auspices of architecture was, to some extend, the continuation of the secession idea, especially its option which was represented and defended by van de Velde himself. The fact that Gropius became the director of the school after van de Velde was not accidental, but it rather had a symbolic meaning.

Van de Velde must have recognized him as his most talented follower. They were both aware of their artistic relations. Gropius, asked to tell about his artistic origins said that "from all the architects of the last generation I was most influenced by Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry van de Velde and Peter Behres". This confession is significant. We should not forget it, and we should also remember one more opinion – Peter Meyer, author of the history of European arts recognizes van de Velde as the most outstanding representative of secession who derived from it his own variety of functionalism.

Henry van de Velde was surely one of the most conscious artists of the turn of the 19th century. He was a theoretician, a pragmatist, a sensitive, open-minded and talented person. His theoretical opinions are very interesting and surprisingly accurate until today's times. Even after 100 years since the time they were written, in the time of the total invasion of mass culture, his opinion claiming for subjectivity, intuition and individuality in arts sounds like a warning and a memento – and in this way he is entirely modern.