Henry van de Velde is a towering figure in the history of modern design. Of prodigious range he was equally at ease designing furniture and objects as entire buildings he paved the way for the transition from Art Nouveau to Modernism, and proposed a model for design education that inspired the Bauhaus. This biography by graphic designer and historian Richard Hollis traces Van de Veldes career from his beginnings as a painter in Antwerp to his trend-setter stature in European architecture and design at the turn of the twentieth century. Van de Velde emerges from Hollis biography as a strikingly contemporary figure, believing in the social power of art in an era of growing nationalism.