Victor Horta was a Belgian architect and designer. Horta is considered one of the most important names in Art Nouveau architecture. He is sometimes credited as the first to introduce the style to architecture from the decorative arts.
Background
Victor Horta was born in Ghent. It is said, that he was first attracted to the architectural profession when he helped his uncle on a building site at the age of twelve.
Horta had had a great interest in music since childhood.
Education
In 1873 Horta went to study musical theory at the Ghent Conservatory. After being expelled for bad behaviour he joined the Department of Architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent instead.
In 1880 Horta went to study architecture at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. Horta did well in his studies and was taken on as an assistant by his professor Alphonse Balat, architect to Leopold II of Belgium.
Career
In 1878 Horta started to work with architect and designer Jules Debuysson in Montmartre. There he was inspired by the emerging impressionist and pointillist artists, and also by the possibilities of working in iron and glass.
In 1880 Horta and his professor Alphonse Balat together designed the royal Greenhouses of Laeken, Horta's first work to utilise glass and iron.
By 1885 Horta was working on his own and was commissioned to design three houses which were built that year. The same year he also joined the Central Society of Belgian Architecture. Over the next few years he entered a number of competitions for public work, and collaborated with sculptors on statuary and even tombs, winning a number of prizes. He focused on the curvature of his designs, believing that the forms he produced were highly practical and not artistic affectations.
After introducing Art Nouveau in an exhibition held in 1892, Horta was inspired. Commissioned to design a home for professor Emile Tassel, he transfused the recent influences into Hôtel Tassel, completed in 1893. The building has since been recognized as the first appearance of Art Nouveau in architecture.
After receiving great acclaim for his designs, Horta was commissioned to complete many other important buildings throughout Brussels.
During 1894, Horta was elected President of the Central Society of Belgian Architecture, although he resigned the following year following a dispute caused when he was awarded the commission for a kindergarten on rue Saint-Ghislain without a public competition.
From 1895 to 1899 Horta designed the Maison du Peuple (House of the People), a major building for the progressive Belgian Workers' Party consisting of a large complex of offices, meeting rooms, cafe and a conference & concert hall seating over 2,000 people.
In tune with the public mood, after some ten years designing in the Art Nouveau style that he pioneered and for which his is best known, from the turn of the century Horta's designs gradually started to become simplified and less flamboyant, with more classical references.
In 1907, and of note for the inclusion of a greater number of classical references, Horta designed the Museum for Fine Arts in Tournai, although it did not open until 1928 due to the war.
The post-war austerity meant that Art Nouveau was no longer affordable or fashionable. From this point on Horta, who had gradually been simplifying his style over the previous decade, no longer used organic forms, and instead based his designs on the geometrical.
In 1927, Horta became the Director of the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, a post he held for four years until 1931. In recognition of his work, Horta was awarded the title of Baron by Albert I of Belgium in 1932.