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De Stijl
By, Nicole Mercado
From the outbreak of new art movements that followed
the Impressionists’ revolutionary new perception of painting,
Cubism arose in the early twentieth century as an important
and influential new direction. In the Netherlands, too, there was
interest in this “new art.” However, because the Netherlands
remained neutral in World War I, Dutch artists were not able
to leave the country after 1914 and were isolated from the
international art world. During that period, painter Theo van
Doesburg started looking for other artists to start a journal/
magazine and art movement influenced by some of the ideas
of Dada, which was later founded in the late summer of 1917
and called De Stijl, Dutch for “The Style”, also known as
neo-plasticism, which took its name from a Dutch magazine.
The De Stijl Movement, sought to express a new
utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. They advocated
pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials
of form and color; they simplified visual compositions to the
vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colors
along with black and white. Mondrian himself sets forth these
limitations in his essay ‘Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art’. He
writes, “... this new plastic idea will ignore the particulars
of appearance, that is to say, natural form and color. On the
contrary, it should find its expression in the abstraction of form
and color, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly
defined primary color.” De Stijl was not limited just to painting;
it also included architecture, stage sets and furniture design. I
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find it very fascinating that a work of art can be very beautiful
with the use of just primary colors, simple shapes such as
squares and rectangles and only vertical and horizontal lines.
The movement spread throughout Europe and America,
the movement originated form the Netherlands, for generations
the Netherlands had been built up with industry and mechanical
structures. Precision and accuracy were a part of the culture,
straight lines and right angles could be seen everywhere. The
De Stijl carried quite an influence into the art world and the
design of architectural workings. Despite a fairly fleeting
exposure, the De Stijl group could possibly be considered the
most important contribution made by the Netherlands towards
the development of modern art. The De Stijl movement was
founded by Theo Van Doesburg and was joined by a group of
artists and architects, which include painters: Piet Mondrian,
Bart Anthony Van der Leck, and Vilmos Huszar. The architects:
Gerrit Rietveld, Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, and others.
Working in abstract geometric style. According to Meggs “De
Stijl sought universal laws of equilibrium and harmony for
art, which could then be a prototype for a new social order”.
Theo Van Doesburg aka (Mr. Diagonal) a Dutch artist,
practicing in painting, writing and poetry, architecture and
founder of the De Stijl movement applied De Stijl principles to
architecture, sculpture and typography. He edited and published
Two
Theo Van Doesburg
Composition VII
(The Three Graces)
1917
Composition X 1918
Counter Composition V
1924
Counter- Composition VI
1925
Three
Contra-Composition XVI
1925
Simultaneous
Counter-Composition
1929
Arithmetic Composition
1930
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the journal De Stijl from 1917 until
his death in 1931, primarily with his
own limited resources. He also taught
for a short period at the Bauhaus and
collaborated on numerous architectural projects. The
De Stijl journal advocated the absorption of pure
art by applied art though architectural, product and
graphic design. According to Darwent “Van Doesburg
proclaimed diagonals to be better than horizontals
and verticals, which he saw as classicizing, oldfashioned and worst of all based on the human body”.
His aesthetic of typography and architectural form
can be seen on his book cover that he designed with
collaboration with Hungarian Artist Laszlo MoholyNagy. There is a structured composition, the piece is
formed with common red, yellow and blue shapes
divided by strong black horizontal and vertical
lines covered in white text. The piece is absolutely
amazing. The simplicity of it is what makes the piece
so interesting. Another amazing piece that I very
much liked was the Counter Composition V. The
piece is very powerful because the shapes used are
positioned in a diagonal structure making the piece
feel like it is there is movement. The main focal point
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is the red square in the middle which was the first thing that
my eye is drawn to and I’m sure once people look at this piece,
the simplicity and powerfulness of it will capture the viewer’s
attention also as it did mine. There are also numerous amounts of
other paintings that he has painted that I was fascinated by such
as the Arithmetic Composition, Composition X and many more.
His influence was widespread and he is now regarded as one of
the most important abstract painters of the early 20th century.
Piet Mondrian also another artist of the De Stijl
movement; he was a Dutch painter and an important contributor
to movement. Despite being well known, Mondrian’s paintings
exhibited complexity simplicity. His paintings were best known
to consist of rectangular forms of red, yellow, blue, separated
by thick, black, rectilinear lines, which became the result of a
stylistic evolution that occurred over the course of nearly thirty
years, which continued beyond that point to the end of his life.
He evolved a non-representational form, which he termed NeoPlasticism, a style of abstract painting, using only vertical and
horizontal lines and rectangular shapes in black, white, gray,
and primary colors. According to Chilvers “He claimed that art
should be ‘denaturized’, by which he meant that it must be purely
abstract, with no representational relation to the natural world. To
this end he limited the elements of pictorial design to the straight
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Piet Mondrian
Composition in lines
(Black and White)
1916- early 1917
New York City I
1941-42
Composition in Red,
Blue, and Yellow
1937-42
Broadway Boogie Woogie
1942-43
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line and the rectangle (the right angles in a strictly horizontalvertical relation to the frame) and to the primary colors—
blue, red, and yellow—together with black, white, and grey.
In this way he thought that one might escape the particular
and achieve expression of an ideal of universal harmony”.
Before Mondrian had joined in the De Stijl movement he
originally painted traditional landscapes, symbolic style
influenced by Van Gogh paintings expressing nature and
later moved cubism toward a pure, geometric abstraction.
His work was later evolved to a pure geometric abstraction
that he is well known today for. According to PietMindrain.
org Mondrian says “I construct lines and color combinations
on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the
utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me,
puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an
urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as
close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from
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that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external
foundation!) of things… I believe it is possible that,
through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with
awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition,
and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms
of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct
lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it
is true”. Mondrian’s art to me is my favorite type of art; I
love how he has used simple shapes to compose a piece.
There are so many different ways he has positioned the
yellow, blue and red rectangles along with the black lines
to create a variety of pieces. Within his collection some
pieces have many lines and many colored rectangles and
other simply just have one square. My favorite piece
that he has created is The Broadway Boogie, a bright,
lively painting reflecting upbeat music. This piece has
no black lines visible, which is rare because most of his
other paintings contain them. This work of art is unique
and different because all the lines are yellow and there
are small tiny colored squares all over the piece. They
are inside the yellow lines; also there are squares within
squares. I absolutely love it and would like to own this
piece along with many other works of art I like that
he has created. Mondrian had a profound influence on
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subsequent art and is now seen as one
of the greatest of all modern artists.
Bart Anthony Van der Leck also
another artist of the De Stijl movement;
he was a Dutch painter, designer, and
ceramicist. After having met Mondrian
and van Doesburg his style became completely abstract, as
did Mondrian’s. But after disagreements with Mondrian his
abstract style became based on representational images,
which could be seen on the layout of the Batavier Line
posters. The two posters are so different from the common
red, blue and yellow rectangle colored scheme I’m used to
seeing. On one poster there is no color used at all, the only
thing that keeps this work of art as a De Stijl art piece is the
black horizontal lines that are structured to hold the images on
the piece. The other picture has color but the color scheme is
very different from the normal De Stijl colors, like the other
piece, the only thing that keeps this work of art as a De Stijl
art piece is the black horizontal lines that are structured to
hold the images on the piece but in this piece vertical black
lines are used. He also designed the De Stijl journal logo by
having the letters constructed from an open grid of squares
and rectangles that can be seen on the cover of the De Stijl.
In his studies he continued to render his subjects in
blocks of even, primary colors against a white background,
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Bart Anthony Van der Leck
Layout for a Batavier
Line Poster
1915-16
Batavier Line Poster
1916
Composition 1918
Composition with one
grey stripe
1958
Compositie 18
no. 1
1918
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but he would subsequently reduce the images by applying
more and more white over the edges, ‘painting them away’,
until all that remained were geometrical shapes set against
a white background. Like Mondrian, he stopped giving his
works titles. He only signed, dated and - for some time numbered them on the back. His paintings looked rather like
tangram puzzles, with the fundamental difference that
Van der Leek’s blocks of color were never allowed to
touch, let alone overlap, one another. His paintings
usually had a white background against which he
had images that were set to merge into a fairly wide
white frame. In some cases, he painted a series of
unconnected squares or rectangles on the borders of
the scene, which joined up in the observer’s mind.
Never was this frame to be closed, he even preferred
not to have black lines printed around illustrations
of his work, because he felt it would disconnect the
painting from its surroundings. According to Van
der Leek’s rather metaphysical theory, ‘open’, or
unconnected, shapes set against a white background
gave the work itself an ‘openness’ and allowed its
surroundings to keep influencing it. In other words,
that ‘openness’ prevented the painting from becoming
stultified and ultimately futile. Initially it was
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possible, with a little determination, to identify the original
objects, but they grew increasingly indistinct in the course of
1917, as Van der Leek became more focused on the structure
of his compositions. He distributed his blocks of color over the
picture plane according to an imaginary scheme of horizontal,
vertical and diagonal lines, with rotation playing an increasing
role. Van der Leek’s paintings no longer had anything to
do with his original starting points in the visible world.
Vilmos Huszár also another artist of the De Stijl
movement; was a Hungarian painter and designer. He
designed the cover for the first issue. In 1918 he designed
interior color schemes for the bedroom of Bruynzeel house in
Voorburg. From 1920 to 1921 he collaborated with Piet Zwart
on furniture designs. He left the De Stijl group in 1923 and
collaborated with Gerrit Rietveld on an exhibition interior
for the Greater Berlin Art Exhibition. From 1925, Huszár
concentrated on graphic design and painting. In 1926 he
created a complete visual identity for Miss Blanche Virginia
cigarettes, which included packaging, advertising, and pointof-sale displays. The concept drew on the imagery associated
with the “New Women”, or Flappers, that were emerging in the
1920s. The Flappers were perceived as young, single, urban,
and employed, with independent ideas and a certain disdain
for authority and social norms. The smoking of cigarettes
was closely associated with this newly found independence.
His works of art are a bit different from the normal
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Vilmos Huszár
Cover design for De Stijl
journal/magazine
1917
Komposition 1918
Packaging for Miss Blanche
Virginia cigarettes
1926
Composition
1955-1960
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De Stijl art pieces. For example in his painting titled
Komposition, he has used different colors, not the average
yellow, red and blue, he switched out the red and added green.
The piece looks completely different from all the other De
Stijl pieces because the whole color scheme has changed from
a bright warm color scheme to a dark cool color scheme but
in his painting tiled Composition he has used the De Stijl
color scheme but the only thing different about this piece is
that the shapes aren’t the average squares, they have been
distorted in a way that some look like triangles which isn’t a
bad thing at all, I like it because it is different. Also Huszar
combined his black and white composition with type and Van
Doesburg’s logo to create a rectangle in the center of the page.
Gerrit Rietveld also another artist of the De Stijl
movement; was a Dutch furniture designer and architect.
Rietveld is famous for his Red and Blue chair, built in 1917 is
one of my absolute favorites. This chair embodies everything
about the De Stijl movement, the use of colors is spot on and
the used of shapes on the backrest and seat on the chair are just
simply perfect. The chair in a way looks like a 3D effect. The
chair was designed for the Rietveld Schröder House, which
is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 1918, he started his
own furniture factory, and changed the chair’s colors after
becoming influenced by the ‘De Stijl’ movement, of which he
became a member in 1919, the same year in which he became
an architect. He designed his first building, the Rietveld
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Gerrit Rietveld
Red and Blue Chair
1917
Rietveld
Schröder House
(Exterior) Built
in 1924,located
in Utrecht,
Netherlands
Rietveld
Schröder House
(Interior) Built
in 1924,located
in Utrecht,
Netherlands
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Schröder House, in 1924, in close collaboration
with the owner Truus Schröder-Schräder. Built in
Utrecht on the Prins Hendriklaan 50, the house has
a conventional ground floor, but is radical on the
top floor, lacking fixed walls but instead relying on
sliding walls to create and change living spaces. The
design seems like a three-dimensional realization
of a Mondrian painting. The house has been a
UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. The
Rietveld Schröder House constitutes both inside and
outside a radical break with all architecture before it.
According to the Rietveld Schröder House
website. “The house is literally a machine for
living in. After the death of Truus Schröder in 1985
the house became the property of the Rietveld
Schröderhuis Foundation that in turn entrusted it to
the Centraal Museum to administer once it had been
restored. It has been open to the public since 1987.
At the end of 2000 UNESCO placed it on the World
Heritage List as ‘an important and unique icon in
Western architectural history and a masterpiece of
human creativity.’ The Schröder House occupies a
key position in Rietveld’s work. Many people want
to see it, but not everyone has the chance to come to
Utrecht. Moreover it can only accommodate a fairly small
number of visitors.As administrator, the Central Museum
Seventeen
in Utrecht has therefore decided to make the house
available online”. Initially, Rietveld wanted to construct
the house out of concrete. It turned out that it would be
too expensive to do that on such a small building. The
foundations and the balconies were the only parts of the
building that were made out of concrete. The walls were
made of brick and plaster. The window frames and doors
were made from wood as well as the floors, which were
supported by wooden beams. To support the building,
steel girders with wire mesh were used. The facades
are a collage of planes and lines whose components are
purposely detached from, and seem to glide past, one
another. This enabled the provision of several balconies.
Like Rietveld’s Red and Blue Chair, each component has
its own form, position and color. Colors where chosen
as to strengthen the plasticity of the facades surfaces in
white and shades of grey, black window and doorframes,
and a number of linear elements in primary colors. There
is little distinction between interior and exterior space.
The rectilinear lines and planes flow from outside to
inside, with the same color palette and surfaces. Even the
windows are hinged so that can only open 90 degrees to the
wall, preserving strict design standards about intersecting
planes, and further blurring the delineation of inside and out.
Another artist of the De Stijl movement was Jacobus
Johannes Pieter Oud, a Dutch architect. Oud was one
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Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud
Façade of the Café De
Unie, Rotterdam.
(1925)
Directiekeet Oud-Mathenesse, Aakstraat RotterdamNetherlands ( 1923)
House for the direction of works of the Oud-Mathenesse colony in Rotterdam (1923 )
Nineteen
of a number of Dutch architects who attempted to reconcile
strict, rational, ‘scientific’ cost-effective construction technique
against the psychological needs and aesthetic expectations of the
users. His own answer was to practice ‘poetic functionalism’. In
1927, he was one of the fifteen architects who contributed to the
influential modernist Weissenhof Estate exhibition. In America
Oud is perhaps best known for being lauded and adopted by the
mainstream modernist movement, then summarily kicked out
on stylistic grounds. As of 1932, he was considered one of the
four greatest modern architects along with Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, and was prominently
featured in Philip Johnson’s International Style exhibition.
In 1925 Oud designed the Façade of the Café De Unie,
Rotterdam, he successfully designed a asymmetrical structure
protecting De Stijl’s vision of order on an environmental
scale while designing this building he resolved problems of
signage, and identification. Architectural and graphic forms of
contrasting color and scale are ordered into harmonious balance.
The De Stijl movement started off as a published
journal/magazine and now it has become a well know art
movement. De Stijl paintings convey elements of nature
expressed abstractly. I can’t imagine limiting myself as an artist
to just two or three colors. Or imagine painting only squares
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and straight lines, it sounds crazy but, a
group of Dutch artists in the early 20th
century, they did just that and the outcome
of their designs have become well know
al around the world. The De Stijl artists
sought to preserve the primacy of aesthetic
principles as agents of social reform in
their own right. As a result, composition
and balance played a huge part in their
work, making the De Stijl art movement
fairly influential in the next few decades of
modern design and modern architecture.
Twenty One
WorksCited
Chilvers, Ian. “Neo-Plasticism.” Web.
Darwent, Charles. “Van Doesburg & the International AvantGarde, Tate Modern, London.” The Independent | News
| UK and Worldwide News | Newspaper. Web. <http://
www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/
van-doesburg--the-international-avantgarde-tatemodern-london-1891448.html>.
Meggs, Philip B. A History of Graphic Design. New York:
John Wiley & Sons, 1998. Print.
“Netherlands 1914 - 1919.” Piet Mondrian | Pietmondrian |
Mondrian. Web. <http://www.pietmondrian.org/aboutpiet-mondrian.php#top>.
“Rietveld Schröder House.” Web.
“Tate | Glossary | Neo-Plasticism.” Tate: British and
International Modern and Contemporary Art. Web.
<http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.
jsp?entryId=191>.
Twenty Two