Tropon
Artist
Henri Clemens van de Velde
(Belgian, 1863 - 1957)
Date1898
MediumFour-color lithograph
DimensionsOverall: 14 1/2 × 10 7/8 inches (36.83 × 27.61 cm)
Credit LinePurchase: Nelson Gallery Foundation
Object numberF86-18
On View
Not on viewCollections
Exhibition HistoryArt on the Avenues: Posters from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, June 16-July 28, 1996, no cat., as Tropon.
Art of Advertising, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 22-July 17, 2011, no cat., as Tropon.
Famed Art Nouveau designer Henry van de Velde created this four-color poster for the Tropon food company. While its rhythmic fluidity and organic forms convey aspects of the product (egg white or protein nourishment), its pattern of tightly ruled lines accentuates the strength of the firm’s name. This is the only poster van de Velde produced. Its design was so successful that its core elements established the firm’s identity and appeared on company stationery and its various products. Believing that, together, the fine and applied arts could shape “a happy and egalitarian future,” van de Velde joined the Deutsche Werkbund, a German association of artists, architects, designers and industrialists, in 1907.
With Lords Gallery, Ltd., London, by May 19, 1986;
Purchased from Lords Gallery by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1986.George L. McKenna, Prints, 1460-1995 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 277, (repro.), as Tropon, publ. in Pan, Vol. IV, No. 1.
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