Victor Horta
The architect of Art Nouveau.
In 1893 Victor Horta built the Hôtel Tassel in Brussels, one of the first Art Nouveau houses, with curving iron columns and mosaic floors.
Victor Horta was born in 1861 in Ghent in Belgium, the son of a shoemaker. He studied architecture at the academy in Ghent, spent some time in Paris and then continued his studies at the academy in Brussels. There he worked for the architect Alphonse Balat, who designed the great Royal Greenhouses at Laeken. The encounter with iron and glass was important for him.
His breakthrough came with the Hôtel Tassel in Brussels, built in 1892–93 for a professor. The house is counted among the first in the Art Nouveau style. The central stairwell with exposed iron columns branching like plant stems, painted tendrils on the walls and mosaic floors with curving lines made a great impression. The Hôtel Solvay and the Hôtel van Eetvelde followed. His own house and studio in Saint-Gilles, built in 1898–1901, is now the Horta Museum. In 2000 four of his houses were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Horta designed not only the buildings but also furniture, door handles, lamps and wallpapers. He used iron and glass openly in houses, which was new, and let light pour in through skylights. The whiplash line, undulating through columns, railings and patterns, became the hallmark of Art Nouveau. The plans were free and adapted to their plots.
For the Belgian Workers' Party he designed the Maison du Peuple, opened in 1899, with a façade of iron and glass. The building was demolished in 1965 despite international protests, which became a wake-up call for the preservation of modern architecture. During the First World War Horta stayed in the United States. After the war he abandoned Art Nouveau for a more austere, more classical style, as in the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bozar, in Brussels from the 1920s and in Brussels Central Station, which was completed after his death.
Horta was made a baron in 1932 and died in 1947. He destroyed a large part of his own archive, so much about his work is unknown. Today he is regarded as the foremost architect of Art Nouveau, and his houses draw visitors from all over the world to Brussels.