De Stijl

De Stijl

An Exploration of a Movement and the Men behind it.

Throughout history the world has held only one constant endevour, the never ending, consuming, and life changing endevour of change. All things have a beginning and all things have an end, this truth is held inevitable by all within the world of academia, art historians included. However, rarely in life there are things that end and continue to effect this world, with the exclusion of war and geographical discovery. De Stijl is one such thing. This paper will examine the radical change in the art world that was headed by two men, Theo Van Doesberg and Piet Mandrian, known as “De Stijl”, or in modern English “The Style”. The focus of this essay will be the reasoning behind the start of “De Stijl”, the persons involved with the movement, and the lasting effects of the movement.

To understand De Stijl, we must first understand the creators. Now, I will give you an introduction to Piet Mondrian, who he was as a Dutchman, an Artist, and a Father of an artistic movement. Mondrian, born Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, was born in Amersfoort in 1872 to a father of the same name who was a teacher and draftsman. His artistic training began early at the hands of his father and his uncle Fritz Mondriaan, a pupil of The Hague School painter Willem Maris. He was schooled, like most young artists in depicting the world around him as it appeared, often creating landscapes and other basic styles of drawing. At age 20 (1892) he entered the Academy for Fine Art in Amsterdam, where he started his teaching career. While teaching in Amsterdam he experimented greatly with painting, a passion he was devoted to, creating images of fields, meadows, and windmills, still within the Dutch tradition of Landscape Painting. Yet, as he grew as an artist he moved more and more towards the bright, brilliant, pointillist style in the footsteps of Van Gogh, like many other Dutch painters had done before.

When you view Mondrian’s paintings chronologically, it is easy to see the transition that eventually lead him to the master of primary abstraction that he was upon his death, however it is just as easy to see that was brought up in the classic Dutch style of the late 19th century. This was a part of Mondrian that he was not ashamed of, but he certainly longed to break from his Dutch heritage as a painter. His artistic influences were more worldly than many of his peers. Mondrians works’ were very influenced by the German Expressionists, and more over, the Cubist works of Pablo Picasso and Paul Cezanne gripped him in a way he had not known, so much so that he decided to break almost entirely from his Dutch roots when in 1911 he left Holland for the artistic playground of Paris. This is why we now know him as “Mondrian”as opposed to his given name of “Mondriaan”, a change he made upon his emmigration.

While in Paris, Mondrian began to develop into the artisit that many people now know him as, an abstract purest, searching for the essence of a painting within the shapes and colors of a composition. During his time in Paris, his infatuation with Cubism grew even stronger, however, Mondrian never self identified as a Cubist painter, and rightful so, as his style of abstracting images from their real world context was never really the same as the Cubist approach.

During his time in Paris, Mondrian continued to search for meaning in life, using painting as a tool. He stated “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 that, until I reach the foundation, still just an external foundation, of things...”. This thinking is what drove Mondrian to become one of the first true Abstract artists.

However, while visiting his family in his native land of Holland in 1914, World War I eruptted, forcing him to stay until the resolve of the conflict. This twist of fate is what brought him in to contact with Theo Van Doesburg, and what led to the eventual creation of the magazine and artistic school of “De Stijl”. Before we begin our discussion of this magazine, and its influence as a “school”of artists, we must examine, as we have with Mondrian, who Theo Van Doesburg was.

Theo Van Doesburg was born in August of 1883 to photographer Wilhelm Küpper in Utrecht. His early work is heavily influenced by the work of the late Vincent Van Gogh. However later in life he became a major player in the movement of abstraction. Like Mondrian, Van Doesburg conciderd life and art to be as one, using the latter to decode the first. His thoughts on painting came from his thoughts on personal spirituallity and this is said to have lead him to the abstract form of art he is known for. However, unlike Mandrian, his talent was not only used on the canvas. Van Doesburg was an influential architect and designer along with being a journalist, poet, and in some aspects a philosopher. It was he that worked with publications prior to his meeting with Mandrian, and this experience is what allowed him to create “De Stijl” as a circulating periodical. Van Doesburg remained the editor and main force behind “De Stijl”until his death.

This is a very small amount of information in comparison to what I have given you on Mondrian, but one must take into account that this essay is focused on De Stijl itself and thus only needed information is given here on Van Doesburg, not to mention the short (in comparison) span of his life, having died at age 47. One may also remember that until a recent show at the Tate Modern in London, Van Doesburg had remained on the “back burner” of the abstract art world, while Mandrian was given the fame of the two, thus making his works more examined and written upon.

Now that we have a working background of De Stijl creator (Van Doesburg), and its lead painter and now most famous contributor (Mandrian) we can begin to discuss what exactly “De Stijl” was, outside of being a magazine. De Stijl is a movement ( the magazine was produced to expose others to the movement) founded in 1917 in Holland that lasted until 1931. However, this date, 1917, is not totally correct, as Van Doesburg was meeting with others including Mondrian around 1915, but we must use the 1917 date as an official start.

The primary goal of De Stijl artists was to create abstract works using strong shapes; lines, squares, and rectangles, to create a formal composition that could be viewed as a balanced form or product. All of their creations on canvas, or in architecture, were influenced by he American architect Frank Loyd Wright. The artists used the primary colors; red, yellow, and blue, as well as black, white, and grey to compose their paintings. Just as important to painting was the writing of Manifestos, which were signed by all members, that told what the group wanted from the worlds of visual art and construction, as well as the rolls of government and society to move toward. This is where we begin to understand that De Stijl was much more than a group of like minded visual artists, but an effort to introduce the World to ideas the men held dear, ideas that were drawn from Eastern Philosophy as well is current thinking on social ideas of their own time.

The beginning years of the group were the most well meshed, however in 1918 Bart van der Leck left the group due to artistic differences. The constructions of the group, to use a term that may seem more of DaDa heritage, were based in the beginning on straight horizontial and vertical lines, making joints very reminesent of the work of a carpenter as oppossed to the brush strokes of a painter. This is what was radically different about De Stijl members, and this is what marks the birth of Abstract art. Around 1920, or 1921, the founder Van Doesburg began to associate himself with Russian Constructivism as well as the German architectual school that was growing with a rapid pace, Bauhaus. These associations caused unrest within the group. He went as far as to create to false names for himself, creating works of poetry under the names “I.K Bonset” and “Aldo Camini”, however this was not known until after Van Doesburgs death. Another rift was created in the group when Van Doesburg stated in 1924 the the diagonal line was more important in constructing forms than that of the horizontal and vertical, a statement believed in the school of Elementarism. The proposal of this idea marked the exit of Mondrian from the group.



Just as the group had systematically been created, it also systematically broke down. The death of De Stijl came with the death of Theo Van Doesburg, as he was the foundation of the group, and without him there was no tie to bind the remaining members. In closing on the topic of De Stijl, I feel I must mention the other members that made up the original group, as they had just as important a roll as the two members I have chosen to focus on, and should thus be mentioned; J.J.P. Oud- Artist, Vilmos Huszar- Artist, and entering the group a year after its founding Gerrit Rietveld- Architect. I have until this point intentionally excluded poet Anthony Kok, as I am more interested in the visual aesthetic of the movement. However, it is important to make clear that De Stijl was just as interested in literature and poetry as it was visual production.

After his departure from De Stijl, Mondrian continued to paint in the abstract, formal style he had been creating in the early twenties upon his return to Paris. He moved to London in 1938 as Fasicism was a looming threat in France at the time, but left London in 1940 for New York where he would remain until his death. Sadly, his works were still evolving in the 1940’s, ended only by his death in 1944, when he had begun experimenting with the use of thick colored lines breaking from his early devotion to the black line.

His later work, such as “New York City” (1942) is an amzing array of colored lines, creating planes and depth unseen in his earlier works. However, his masterwork to this viewer is the unfinished “Victory Boggie Woogie” a creation of small colored squares laid atop and below each other to create a sensation on may only gain from veiwing New York city on a dark night from the sky. His works are so beloved that they have been turned into everything from a clothing line collection to umbrellas, printed on lunch-boxes, and even recently put onto Nike shoes. Piet Mondrian is one of the great masters of abstract geometric art, and his influence on the painting world is enourmous. His and the work of Van Doesburg, as well as all members of the school of De Stijl are influential even today in the fields of painting and architecture, and thus they are a crucial part of our visual world.