Cauchie House

The Cauchie House, built in 1905, was the private residence of Paul Cauchie and can be regarded as one of the most beautiful realizations of Art Nouveau in Brussels. The artist expressed his personal artistic taste and views through this house in a social context where conformity prevailed. The merit of Paul Cauchie lies in his understanding that the construction logic - Viollet-le-Duc and the myth of iron, adopted by Horta - could be refuted by a simple pictorial solution, or at least by a purely figurative hypothesis.

*Jugendstil or Art Nouveau is an art movement that was popular in various places in Europe between 1890 and 1914, mainly as a reaction to the form-dissolving Impressionism. Jugendstil manifested itself primarily in functional objects (glass art, books, ceramics, jewelry, furniture, etc.), architecture, and painting. The movement had a short but intense flourishing period, which mainly expanded during the Belle Époque. In Western Europe, the style was already a thing of the past well before 1910, while it could persist a bit longer in the East.

Jens Willems