Tropon: Protein Food

Original Language TitleTropon: Eiweiss Nahrung

Artist Henry 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

SignedSigned in plate at lower right with artist monogram.

InscribedInscribed at lower left: HENRI VAN DE VELDE, PLAKAT PAN IV 1. / ORIGINALLITHOGRAPHIE IN VIER FARBEN

On View

Not on view

Collections

Prints

Terms

Exhibition History

Thirty Years of Print Purchases for the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, November 19–December 31, 1989, no. 51.

Art on the Avenues: Posters from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, June 16–July 28, 1996, no. 25, as Tropon.

Art of Advertising, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 22–July 17, 2011, no cat., as Tropon.

Gallery Label

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.

Provenance

With Lords Gallery, Ltd., London, by May 19, 1986;

Purchased from Lords Gallery by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1986.

Published References

Pan 4, no. 1 (April/May/June 1898): between 62–63.

Thirty Years of Print Purchases for the Permanent Collection, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1989), 9, 11.

Art on the Avenues: Posters from the Permanent Collection, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 7–8, as Tropon.

George L. McKenna, Prints, 1460–1995 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 277, (repro.), as Tropon.

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