Victor Horta - Life and Career

Life and Career

Born in Ghent, Horta 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 and, in 1873, 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 1878 Horta left for Paris, finding 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.

When Horta's father died in 1880, he returned to Belgium and moved to Brussels, married his first wife, with whom he later fathered two daughters, and went to study architecture at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. In Brussels Horta built a friendship with Paul Hankar, who would later also embrace Art Nouveau. Horta did well in his studies and was taken on as an assistant by his professor Alphonse Balat, architect to Leopold II of Belgium. Together they designed the royal Greenhouses of Laeken, Horta's first work to utilise glass and iron.

In 1884 Horta won the first Prix Godecharle to be awarded for Architecture (for his unbuilt design for Parliament), as well as the Grand Prix in architecture on leaving the Royal Academy.

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 (notably his friend Godefroid Devresse) 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.

During this period, Horta socialised widely and, in 1888, joined the freemasons as a member of the lodge Les Amis Philanthropes of the Grand Orient of Belgium in Brussels. This ensured a stream of clients when he returned to designing houses and shops from 1893.

Horta was appointed Head of Graphic Design for Architecture at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 1892, before being promoted to Professor of Architecture in 1893, a post he left in 1911 after the university authorities failed to offer him the opportunity to design an extension to the university buildings.