Victor Horta
Víctor Horta (Ghent, January 6, 1861 — Brussels, September 8, 1947) was a Belgian architect who pioneered Modernism.
Biography
On his father's side: Victor Horta's father, named Petrus Horta, was a modest shoemaker, born in Bruges in 1795 and who came to settle in Ghent. The eight great-grandparents of this Petrus Horta are in Bruges. Victor Horta's paternal great-great-grandfather (his great-grandfather's father), and apparently the first bearer of the Horta surname in Bruges, Salvator Horta, died in the Hospital de San Juan de Brujas on December 9, 1727. The death record mentions this date: 9 (December 1727) Salvatoor Oortha van Napels. He was probably a Napolitano soldier who had stopped over in the Southern Netherlands. He had married one Isabelle Bruggeman, Bourgeman or Bourgman. He left behind three children born in Bruges: Michaël Carolus born on November 5, 1721, Regina, born on January 14, 1724, and Guido, born on March 31, 1726. The latter was the father of Jacobus Horta, a carpenter, baptized in Bruges on November 24, 1768, who married Anna Theresia De Ceuninck in Bruges in 1790, born in Bruges in 1769. The latter were Victor Horta's grandparents, but he never knew them because they were already dead when he was born in Ghent. It is true that Victor's father was already older when his child was born, and that Victor was barely out of adolescence when he lost his father in 1880.
On his mother's side: The mother of Victor Horta, whom Petrus Horta married a second time in Ghent in 1851, was Henriette Coppieters. She was born in Lede in 1824, and her father Jacques Coppieters was an innkeeper there, although he was born in Hamme (East Flanders). Her maternal grandfather, Joannes Baptiste Vandersteen, was a bailiff in Lede. Thus, Victor Horta's maternal family origins lie in the region surrounding Dendermonde.
Victor Petrus Horta was born in Ghent on January 6, 1861 into a large family. He was the fourteenth of fifteen children. His mother, Henrica known as Henriette Coppieters, was the second wife of Petrus Jacobus Joannes, who already had ten children from his first marriage.
Victor Horta studied violin for a brief period. Expelled from the Conservatory for indiscipline, during 1876, at the age of 15, he moved to the Academy of Fine Arts (France) where he began his studies as an architect, enrolling in the specialty of Architectural Drawing. He spent two years working in Paris, and later returned to Belgium in 1880 due to the death of his father. In 1881 he married Luian, with whom he would have his only daughter and from whom he would divorce in 1906, settling in Brussels, where he would resume his architecture studies at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, combining them with the activity professional.
Trajectory
At the age of 23, in 1884 he began working as a draftsman for Alphonse Balat, a prominent figure at the time, since he was the favorite architect of King Leopold II of Belgium. From this architect he learned the principles of classicism which would be influential and clearly visible in his first commissions. In 1893 he became a professor at the university, an important period for his development as an architect, since he received his most influential commissions from his two friends, Autrique and Tassel, for whom he designed and built their respective homes in Brussels..
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Between 1892 and 1893, he carried out his first innovative work: the so-called Tassel House, a single-family building erected in Brussels, where he dispensed with the corridor and the rooms in a row, creating fluid spaces and giving a new treatment to the use of iron and of glass, creating plant forms both in architectural elements and in furniture. He later built Casa Solvay (1895-1900) and his own house, Casa Horta (1898) following identical parameters.
But Horta not only undertook the construction of houses but also applied the new style to other buildings born from the social and economic changes of the century. Thus between 1896 and 1899 he built his considered masterpiece, the House of the People (headquarters of the Belgian Socialist Party), and between 1901 and 1903 the Innovation department store (known as Inno), both buildings unfortunately disappeared, but of which photographic testimonies remain..
Outstanding works
- Hôtel Autrique (1892-1893): work built in parallel to the Tassel House. It is located in Chausee de Haecht 226, and managed to make a formal simplicity of great dignity, despite an adjusted budget. This work highlights the exploration of Victor Horta, as it generates an integration of the building with the street, decorative walls of different thicknesses, symmetrical and asymmetrical forms co-existent, and then there is the revolutionary use of the metal.
- Maison Tassel (1892-1893): located in Brussels, (Belgium), this work is in which the new movement known as Art Nouveau is mainly appreciated since natural elements, curved and asymmetric lines are used in its entirety.
- Casa Solvay (1895-1900): Work located in Brussels. It uses the same parameters as in its first constructions, characterized by an original decoration designed by itself and inspired by plant motifs. Among its main features is its symmetrical facade to the level located around the door-window of the main floor. The materials used are repeated within the works of Victor Horta, such as glass and iron.
- Casa Horta (1898-1902): its own house, which follows the parameters that it already used as a construction style, located on the outskirts of Brussels, is due to the urban expansion that Belgium experienced at the end of the nineteenth century. In the interior of the property the different spaces with their specific uses stand out, such as: the study is different from other sectors. There is also an asymmetrical composition, in rebellion against the canons of the time. However, both buildings maintain a fluid dialogue in terms of general lines of composition, shape and proportion of vains, materials and colors, with which they are also integrated to other street grounds.
- the House of the People (1895-1899): Not only in the construction of houses is this new style appreciated, but it also applies to other buildings that were born following the social and economic changes of the century that were lived, being applied in the work that would be built between the years 1896 and 1899: “The House of the People”, seat of the Belgian Socialist Party. Unlike the works of Victor Horta, in this house the glass is used as a curtain wall in almost the entire facade.
Works
- In Brussels:
- 1890: Maison Matyn - 50 rue de Bordeaux in Saint-Gilles
- 1890-1903: transformation of two neoclassical houses dating from 1844 and belonging to Henri Van Cutsem (former Hôtel Charlier, today Charlie Museum), protected in 1993, 16 avenue of the Arts and 42 rue de la Charité in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode
- 1892-1893: Tassel House - 6 rue Paul-Émile Janson - Unesco World Heritage
- 1893: Maison Autrique - 266 chaussée de Haecht
- 1894: Hôtel Winssinger - 66 rue del Hôtel des Monnaies
- 1894: workshop of Godefroid Devreese - 71 rue des Ailes, transformed
- 1894-1895: Hôtel Frison - 37 rue Lebeau
- 1894-1898: Solvay House - 224 Avenue Louise - Unesco World Heritage
- 1895-1897: house van Eetvelde - 2 and 4 avenue Palmerston - World Heritage of Unesco
- 1895-1899: Jardin d'enfants n° 15 de la ville de Bruxelles, 40 rue Saint-Ghislain
- 1895-1923: clinic Saint-Michel - 152-154 rue de Linthout in Etterbeek, conceived in collaboration with architects Hubert Marcq and Fernand Symons
- 1896: Hôtel Deprez-Van de Velde - avenida Palmerston 3 and rue Boduognat 14
- 1896-1899: Maison du Peuple, destroyed in 1965
- 1898-1901: maison personnelle and workshop - 23-25 rue Américaine - World Heritage of Unesco
- 1899: the Human Passion Pavilion, parc du Cinquantenaire, containing a basrrelieve of Jef Lambeaux
- 1899-1902: Hôtel Aubecq - 520 Avenue Louise, demolished in 1950. One of the facades was dismantled in 1949 and placed successively in several places, including a Namur barracks, thanks to the action of the architect Jean Delhaye, former student and savior of some of Victor Horta's properties. The doors and planes were sold by an Antique Tournes.
- 1901: À l'Innovation, rue Neuve, department stores, destroyed by a fire in 1967.
- 1901-1903: House-taller of the sculptor Pierre Braecke - 31 rue de l'Abdication
- 1901-1903: House-workshop of the sculptor Fernand Dubois - 80 avenue Brugmann
- 1903: Grand bazar Anspach - boulevard Anspach
- 1903: anciens magasins Waucquez, currently the Centre belge de la bande dessinée - 20-21, rue des Sables
- 1903: Maison Sander Pierron, 157 rue de l'Aqueduc en Ixelles
- 1904-1906: Hôtel Max Hallet - 346 Avenue Louise
- 1906: Maison Vinck - 85 rue Washington in Ixelles
- 1906-1923: Hôpital Brugmann - 4 place Van Gehuchten (Laeken)
- 1909: anciens magasins Wolfers frères - 11-13 rue d'Arenberg
- 1922-1928: Brussels Palace of Fine Arts - rue Ravenstein
- 1947- 1952: Brussels Station]-Central - Cantersteen, finished by Maxime Brunfaut.
- In other places in Belgium:
- * 1885: three houses - 49, 51 and 53 Twaalfkameren in Ghent
- La Bastide, its country house and sa conciergerie surplombant Lake Genval in a land acquired in 1912, in La Hulpe
- 1895-1896: pompe à bras de los establos del Château de La Hulpe, en La Hulpe
- 1890: Tomb of Desiré Lesaffre, commissioned by the Masonic Lodge Les Amis Philanthropesin Oudenburg (near Ostende)
- 1899-1903: Villa Carpentier in Renaix
- 1922-1928: Museum of Fine Arts of Tournai (premiers plans d'avant la Première Guerre mondiale), Tournai
- Two piédestaux in collaboration with his friend the sculptor Guillaume Charlier, in Tournai
- A cottage in Sosoye (in the vicinity of Maredsous)
- In Germany:
- 1903: large warehouse Grand Bazar in Frankfurt-sur-le-Main, demolished
The Horta style
Victor Horta brought revolutionary innovations to architecture: the open plan, the diffusion and transformation of light throughout the building and the integration of the curved lines of the decoration into the structure of the building. He became interested in the curved line as soon as he left the Academy, to "transpose the old curve of the columns to other elements of architecture"; (Memories).
He used metal structures, which he often left exposed, to form part of the decoration. They allow to create flexible living spaces, generously illuminated by skylights and light wells. The interior decoration is very inventive, with mosaic floors, painted walls, scrollwork and arabesque ironwork, and personalized furniture.
Victor Horta's houses are all different and adapt perfectly to the client's lifestyle. Quickly, he designed every detail of his buildings and created the furniture himself.
Later, when Art Nouveau was in decline, Victor Horta evolved, and straight lines replaced the curves, but he continued to play with light, the colors of light and the arrangement of spaces. After the First World War, his architectural concepts changed again, his buildings used concrete and became cubist.
Its architecture also demonstrates its social concerns: windows illuminate the basements where the kitchens are located, dumbwaiters and revolving buffets simplify the lives of the servants.
Honors and distinctions
Awards
- 1884: Godecharle Award
Acknowledgments
- 1948: Creation of the Baron Horta Award, delivered by the School of Fine Arts of the Royal Academy of Belgium
- 1993: Opening of the Horta station of the Brussels Premeter System
- 1994: The launch of the 2000 Belgian franc ticket with his face.
- 1996: Bruxelles-Horta Award Foundation, delivered by the Brussels Society of Architects
- An asteroid discovered in 1931 bears its name.
UNESCO Classification
- 2000: UNESCO World Heritage List registration of four works:
- Hôtel Tassel (1893)
- Hôtel Solvay (1895-1903)
- Hôtel van Eetvelde (1895-1901) (currently in the presence of Distrigaz, which uses it as a reception space for group visits)
- Maison Horta (1898-1901) (currently Horta Museum)
Museums
In Brussels, three architectural works are open to the public:
- the old personal house and the study of the architect became the Horta Museum;
- the Autrique House, one of the first works of Victor Horta, presents an interior stage designed by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters;
- the old shops Waucquez houses the Belgian Comic Center
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