Henry van de Velde: Selected Essays, 1889-1914

FAIN: RQ-249921-16

Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT 06459-3208)
Katherine Marie Kuenzli (Project Director: December 2015 to May 2021)

Preparation of a critical edition and translation of a selection of writings by the Belgian architect and art critic Henry van de Velde (1863-1957).

As a painter, designer, architect, teacher, and theorist Henry van de Velde (1863-1957) was a highly original and influential figure on the European art scene and an early champion of abstraction. Our volume presents the artist's most influential writings published between 1889 and 1914. These writings address the origins of abstraction; the interrelationship between painting, architecture, and the applied arts; the role of art in the modern state; and modern art and politics. His corpus is so large and dispersed that it has resisted systematic investigation, and it remains inaccessible to most readers, since his essays were published in three different languages. We have made a selection of van de Velde's texts and are requesting funds to support the work of translation into English, annotation, and introduction that will take place over a three-year period and that will result in an edited volume.

Associated Products

"Von Brüssel zum Bauhaus: Ursprung und Wirkung von Henry van de Veldes Werk und Schriften" (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: "Von Brüssel zum Bauhaus: Ursprung und Wirkung von Henry van de Veldes Werk und Schriften"
Author: Katherine Kuenzli
Abstract: A paper delivered in German at a conference organized by Antje Neumann-Golle entitled "Ein Flame in Deutschland: Henry van de Velde's Wirkung für Europa und die Welt." The conference was sponsored by the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz with assistance provided by the Flemish Consulate in Germany and the Grndstücks- und Gebaudewirtschafts-Gesellschaft in Chemnitz. It was a one-day conference with presenters from the United States, Belgium, Germany, Holland, and Ireland. Over 100 persons attended the conference, including scholars and specialists, members of the van de Velde Foundation, and the general public. Kuenzli's talk addressed van de Velde's career as a whole, including the relationship between his writing and his work.
Date: 12/11/2019
Primary URL: http://https://www.villaesche.de/veranstaltungskalender-museum-fuehrungen/detail/1490.html
Conference Name: "Ein Flame in Deutschland: Henry van de Velde's Wirkung für Europa und die Welt"

"Henry van de Velde: Das Schreiben als Kunsthandwerk und die Herausförderungen der Sprache" (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: "Henry van de Velde: Das Schreiben als Kunsthandwerk und die Herausförderungen der Sprache"
Author: Elizabeth Tucker
Abstract: A paper delivered in German at a conference organized by Antje Neumann-Golle entitled "Ein Flame in Deutschland: Henry van de Velde's Wirkung für Europa und die Welt." The conference was sponsored by the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz with assistance provided by the Flemish Consulate in Germany and the Grndstücks- und Gebaudewirtschafts-Gesellschaft in Chemnitz. It was a one-day conference with presenters from the United States, Belgium, Germany, Holland, and Ireland. Over 100 persons attended the conference, including scholars and specialists, members of the van de Velde Foundation, and the general public. Elizabeth Tucker's talk addressed van de Velde's writings and matters of translation, and served as a "first draft" of the translator's essay she will contribute to Henry van de Velde: Selected Essays, 1889-1914."
Date: 12/11/2019
Primary URL: http://https://www.villaesche.de/veranstaltungskalender-museum-fuehrungen/detail/1490.html
Conference Name: "Ein Flame in Deutschland: Henry van de Veldes Wirken für Europa und die Welt"

"Henry van de Velde und Frank Lloyd Wright: Parallele Leben" (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: "Henry van de Velde und Frank Lloyd Wright: Parallele Leben"
Author: Kathleen James-Chakraborty
Abstract: This talk was given at the same conference as described above. Kathleen James-Chakraborty's lecture addressed the parallels between Henry van de Velde's work and writings and those of Frank Lloyd Wright and contrasted their different receptions in the 20th century.
Date: 12/11/2019
Primary URL: http://https://www.villaesche.de/veranstaltungskalender-museum-fuehrungen/detail/1490.html
Conference Name: "Ein Flame in Deutschland: Henry van de Veldes Wirken für Europa und die Welt"

"From Brussels to the Bauhaus: The Origins and Impact of Henry van de Velde's Work and Writings" (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: "From Brussels to the Bauhaus: The Origins and Impact of Henry van de Velde's Work and Writings"
Author: Katherine Kuenzli
Abstract: In 2019, the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus’s founding in Weimar Germany is being celebrated around the world, but the school’s origins in the work and writings of Walter Gropius’s predecessor in Weimar, Henry van de Velde, are rarely mentioned. This talk explores the oeuvre of this influential Belgian artist, whose work as a painter, designer, architect, and theorist in Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands helped shape the origins of abstraction as an international language that originated in painting but encompassed all the visual media. This presentation consisted of a talk and a circulated text, which represented the first draft of my general introduction for Henry van de Velde: Selected Essays.
Date: 10/7/2019
Primary URL: http://https://www.architecture.yale.edu/calendar/335-from-brussels-to-the-bauhaus-the-origins-and-impact-of-henry-van-de-velde-s-work-and-writings-1889-1914
Conference Name: Yale Architecture Forum

Henry van de Velde: Designing Modernism (Book)
Title: Henry van de Velde: Designing Modernism
Author: Katherine Kuenzli
Abstract: Painter, designer, and architect Henry van de Velde (1863–1957) played a crucial role in expanding modernist aesthetics beyond Paris and beyond painting. Opposing growing nationalism around 1900, he sought to make painting the basis of an aesthetic that transcended boundaries between the arts and between nations through his work in Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Van de Velde’s designs for homes, museums, and theaters received international recognition. The artist, often associated with the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil, developed a style of abstraction that he taught in his School of Applied Arts in Weimar, the immediate precursor of and model for the Bauhaus. As a leading member of the German Werkbund, he helped shaped the fields of modern architecture and design. This long-awaited book, the first major work on van de Velde in English, firmly positions him as one of the twentieth century’s most influential artists and an essential voice within the modern movement.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: http://https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300226669/henry-van-de-velde
Publisher: Yale University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780300226669
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Henry van de Velde: Selected Essays, 1889-1914 (Book)
Title: Henry van de Velde: Selected Essays, 1889-1914
Author: Henry van de Velde
Author: Katherine Kuenzli
Author: Elizabeth Tucker
Editor: Katherine Kuenzli
Abstract: The first English collection of writings by Henry van de Velde, one of the most influential designers and theorists of the twentieth century. Belgian artist, architect, designer, and theorist Henry van de Velde (1863–1957) was a highly original and influential figure in Europe beginning in the 1890s. A founding member of the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil movements, he also directed the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar, Germany, which eventually became the Bauhaus under Walter Gropius. This selection of twenty-six essays, translated from French and German, includes van de Velde’s writings on William Morris and the English Arts and Crafts movement, Neo-Impressionist painting, and relationships between ornament, line, and abstraction in German aesthetics. The texts trace the evolution of van de Velde’s thoughts during his most productive period as a theorist in the artistic debates in France, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Katherine M. Kuenzli expertly guides readers to see how van de Velde’s writings reconcile themes of aesthetics and function, and expression and reason, throughout the artistic periods and regions represented by these texts. With introductory discussions of each essay and full annotations, this is an essential volume for a broad range of scholars and students of the history of fine and applied arts and ideas.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: http://https://shop.getty.edu/products/henry-van-de-velde-selected-essays-1889-1914-978-1606067949
Primary URL Description: Publisher website
Access Model: printed book
Publisher: Getty Research Institute
Type: Edited Volume
Type: Translation
Type: Scholarly Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60606-79
Translator: Elizabeth Tucker
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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