Horta and the Grammar of Art Nouveau
Iwan Strauven, Benjamin Zurstrassen, Aniel Guxholli
Mercatorfonds & Bozar Books, 2023
€45,00
Horta and the Grammar of Art Nouveau offers an innovative in-depth analysis of the architectural approach of Victor Horta, the Belgian architect whose creations between 1893 and 1905 were seminal for the development of Art Nouveau architecture. This book, edited by Iwan Strauven (Professor Architectural History, ULB) and Benjamin Zurstrassen (Director of the Horta Museum in Brussels), assembles new research by national and international experts on the work of Victor Horta, offering new perspectives on Art Nouveau architecture.
The first part of the book sheds a new light on the toolbox of Victor Horta. Focusing on the architectural sources of one specific work, the Tassel house, it gives an insight in where and how Victor Horta conceived of his designs. The second part discusses some fundamental themes of Victor Horta’s architecture, such as the rhetorical use of structure, the innovative use of materials and the use of light in the development of the dynamic plan. It also gives a detailed account of the place of Victor Horta in Sigfried Giedions historiography of the modern movement and more specifically in his seminal work Space Time Architecture. A third part of the publication explores the relation between Victor Horta’s invention of Art Nouveau and the colonial enterprise of King Leopold II. This chapter unveils recently rediscovered archival material on Victor Horta’s project for the Congo Free State pavilion at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris.
ISBN: 9789462303607
