Nele van de Velde

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nele van de Velde (born March 13, 1897 in Uccle , Belgium as Cornélie (Nele) Jenny , † December 13, 1965 in Zurich ) was a Belgian painter , draftsman and wood cutter . She was the only student of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner .

Henry van de Velde with his family in front of his Hohe Pappeln house in Weimar; from left: Puppie, Nele, mother Maria, Anne-Sophie, father Henry, Thylla, Thyl
Louis Held : Nele van de Velde (front) with parents and siblings in front of the Hohe Pappeln house in Weimar, 1912

Life

Nele van de Velde is the eldest daughter of Henry van de Velde and Marie-Louise (Maria) born. Sèthe (1867-1943). She grew up with four siblings in Belgium and after 1901 in Weimar after her father was called to the local arts and crafts school . With her sisters Hélène Johanna Rosina (1899–1935) and Anne Sophie Alma (1901–1944) she attended the free school community of Wickersdorf from 1907 .

From 1918 to 1923 Nele van de Velde lived with her father in the so-called Schlössli, a house directly on Lake Constance in Uttwil , Switzerland . From March 22nd to April 10th, 1918, she stayed at the Bellevue Sanatorium in Kreuzlingen , where she made friends with the artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who had just recovered. He portrayed her several times and advised her artistically, also with regard to printmaking techniques. She in turn provided him with literature, paints and paper. Since 1918 she has illustrated books with woodcuts and drawings. The doctor and psychiatrist in the sanatorium, Ernest Wenger, received a woodcut from her for Christmas ( view from the Pincio over the city of Rome ) and a "softly colored" pencil drawing ( winter landscape ) with a personal dedication. Her woodcut cycle about a visit to Kirchner on the Stafelalp in 1919/1920 is her best-known work. Nele van de Velde had a long-term pen friendship with Kirchner. Your correspondence is an important source for Kirchner research.

As a patient, Nele van de Velde stayed several times in the Bellevue Sanatorium in the 1920s. Then she went to Brussels. In the 1930s she lived in a villa built by her father in Tervuren , which fell into disrepair during World War II . Their large collection of paintings, including many Impressionists, had to be sold below value by the family in order to survive. Maja Sacher invited Nele van de Velde and her now widowed father to Switzerland in 1947. At the beginning she and her fox terrier “Chipa” lived in the boarding house of the child psychiatrist Marie Meierhofer in Oberägeri . Later Maja Sacher, the architect Alfred Roth and a Belgian countess bought a plot of land in Oberägeri with a view of Lake Aegeri . On this property, Roth built a simple wooden bungalow for them in 1957 , in which they could live rent-free.

Nele van de Velde was an artist all her life in the shadow of her famous father, whom she cared for after the death of her mother in 1943 and who looked after him until the end of his life. After the death of her father in 1957, she worked with her brother Thyl (1904–1980) on her father's memoirs with the help of her friend, art historian Hans Curjel .

She got cancer and died shortly after an operation in the hospital.

Publications

  • Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Letters to Nele and Henry van de Velde. Edited by Nele van de Velde, Piper, Munich 1961. (Piper-Bücherei; 163)
  • Nele van de Velde: A day with Kirchner on the Staffelalp. Eleven woodcuts on laid paper and texts. In: Genius. Magazine for emerging and ancient art . Edited by Carl Georg Heise and Hans Mardersteig. Kurt Wolff Verlag , Munich 1920

literature

  • Henry van de Velde: History of my life Ed. And transferred from the manuscript by Hans Curjel . Piper Verlag, Munich 1962 ( PDF )
  • Albert Schoop: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Thurgau: The 10 months in Kreuzlingen 1917–1918. Verlag Kornfeld, Bern 1992. ISBN 3-85773-028-5
  • Pierre Wenger: Memories of Nele van de Velde. In: Thurgauer Jahrbuch , Vol. 74, 1999, pp. 55-67. ( e-periodica )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Young girl with cigarette (Nele van de Velde), 1918, woodcut. Digital collection of the Städel Museum
  2. ^ Regina Freyberger: Nele van de Velde . In: Women behind the bridge artists. More than models In: Blog Städelmuseum , August 28, 2019
  3. ↑ pp. 447-450. Maja Sacher, Alfred Roth, Henry van de Velde 1947 ( PDF )
  4. ↑ Pierre Wenger: Memories of Nele van de Velde. In: Thurgauer Jahrbuch , Vol. 74, 1999, pp. 55-67. ( e-periodica )
personal data
SURNAME Van de Velde, Nele
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Van de Velde, Nele Cornélie Jenny
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian painter, draftsman and wood cutter
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Uccle , Belgium
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1965
Place of death Zurich