De Stijl

DE STIJL

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he De Stijl Movement, also known as Neoplasticism, was born in the Netherlands in the early 20th century, around 1917. It was founded by Dutch artists Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian, who were later joined by other like-minded artists as well as architects, such as Gerrit Rietveld, Bart van der Leck, and J.J.P. Oud. This unorthodox movement was a response to the chaos and destruction of World War I. Its proponents sought to establish a radically new artistic order that reflected and concentrated on harmony, unity, and simplicity. De Stijl was influenced by previous design movements, mainly Cubism in which it emphasized geometric forms and abstraction. It was also a reaction rebelling against the decorative excesses of Art Nouveau.

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e Stijl artists were inspired by the philosophy of mathematician and philosopher M.H.J. Schoenmaekers, who believed that art should express universal principles and reduce forms to their essence. The main aesthetic elements of De Stijl include the use of geometric shapes, as well as the use of red, blue, and yellow (which are the primary colors on the color wheel) at times combined with accents of black, white, and gray, and a strong emphasis on horizontal and vertical lines. The movement was all about the reduction of visual elements to their purest forms, eliminating all ornamentation and representing the world through the concept of “abstract.” This minimalistic approach was not only seen and applied to painting but also to architecture, furniture design, even typography. De Stijl’s influence can be seen in the development of the Bauhaus school in Germany and the International Style in architecture. Although this art movement disbanded in the late 1920s to the beginning stages of the 1930s, even so De Stiji’s principles continue to inspire artists and designers today, reflecting the enduring appeal of minimalism and abstraction.

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enowned an architect and furniture designer, Gerrit Rietveld played a pivotal role in the De Stijl movement. Born in Utrecht, Netherlands, in 1888 Gerrit Rietveld began his “artistic” career as a cabinetmaker before studying architecture, he joined the relatively famous De Stijl group in 1919.

Rietveld’s association with the movement was marked by his collaboration with other prominent and well-known members such as Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. Their shared vision of a “new style,” characterized and liberated by geometric abstraction and primary colors, was expressed through various disciplines including painting, sculpture, and architecture. Rietveld’s work was mostly influenced by his time at the Rietveld-Schröder House. The house was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2000., which he designed in 1924 in collaboration with Truus Schröder. The Rietveld-Schröder House, showcasing Rietveld’s architectural prowess and his ability to implement De Stijl principles into a fully functional living space. The house features an open floor plan, flexible interior walls, and a bold use of color, making it a prime example of Rietveld’s innovative approach to design.

Gerrit Rietveld portrait

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ne of, if not Rietveld’s most seminal works is the iconic masterpiece, Red and Blue Chair, designed in 1918. The chair embodies the De Stijl principles with its simplified, basic geometric form and exquisite use of primary colors. Rietveld once asserted, “I am for the straight line, not the curve,” highlighting his preference for simplicity and abstraction in design.2 The Red and Blue Chair has become a symbol of the De Stijl movement, illustrating the group’s revolutionary ideas and Rietveld’s significant contribution to modern design.

Red and Blue Chair 1918-1923

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heo van Doesburg was a writer who played a crucial role in the development of The De Stijl movement. Born on August 30, 1883, in Utrecht, Netherlands. Doesburg originally had his mind set on pursuing a career in acting before shifting his focus to visual arts. He took it upon himself found a influential journal called “De Stijl” in 1917, which served as a catalyst for artists and architects alike to share their ideas on abstraction and the art movement’s core principles. Van Doesburg was also associated with the Bauhaus school in Germany, where he taught for some amount of time, and was a member of the Cercle et Carré group which was in Paris. Following this he had the opportunity to work in collaboration with other famous figures which in the movement, such as Piet Mondrian, Gerrit Rietveld, and J.J.P. Oud, as they collectively sought to create a new harmony in art and architecture through geometric abstraction and the reduction of form and color to their purest elements.3

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Theo van Doesburg

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Counter-Composition XIII - 1925

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ne of Theo van Doesburg’s seminal works was his “Counter-Composition” series of paintings, which he created between 1924 and 1925. These paintings were a departure from the rigid, grid-like structures of his early work and those of his peers and colleagues, such as Mondrian. In these pieces one could very much argue that van Doesburg introduced the diagonal line, may have lead he to believe that those pieces had greater dynamic and expressive potential. This slight shift towards the mathematical, well-ordered style led to a rift between van Doesburg and other De Stijl artists, as they felt the diagonal line went against the movement’s principles.4 Nonetheless, van Doesburg’s innovative approach to abstraction and his ongoing search for new artistic possibilities greatly contributed to the development of the De Stijl movement and its lasting impact on modern art and design.

Counter-Composition XVI - 1925

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ossibly the person most associated with de Stijl was Piet Mondrian. Piet Mondrian. Born in 1872 in Amersfoort, Netherlands, Mondrian was a pioneering artist who played a pivotal role in the development of the De Stijl movement. He did have some artistic studies in his youth at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam but later he moved to Paris, where he was exposed to the avant-garde art scene. As such Mondrian’s style changed from landscape painting to more abstract, geometric paintings which would be his signature from then on. The De Stijl movement, again, founded by Theo van Doesburg, sought to reduce art to its most basic elements, focusing on simplicity, abstraction, and the use of primary colors. Mondrian took this core principles to heart and contributed immensely to the movement, becoming one of its leading figures, working closely with other artists and architects to promote their shared vision of a new, harmonious visual language.5

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Piet Mondrian portrait

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ne of Mondrian’s most popular and critically acclaimed works is “Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow” (1930), which many say exemplifies the pinnacle principles of the De Stijl movement. In this painting, he created a grid of black lines perfectly creating a balanced composition of geometric forms, filled with the primary colors red, blue, and yellow.

This work embodies Mondrian’s late but very, like he’d like to put it, satisfactory belief in the harmony of opposites, as he stated, “Art is not made for anybody and is, at the same time, for everybody.”6 By reducing art to its most essential and purest elements, Mondrian looked to create a universally accessible visual language that could stand on its own without any complex direction, without any remnants of shadows or colors, without any complex rules whatsoever. With this painting he sought to transcend both cultural and personal differences. His work has had a lasting impact on the fields of art, design, and architecture, influencing generations of artists and designers who have embraced the principles of abstraction and simplicity in their own works.

Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow 1930

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aking a step back and looking at these three artists and their works, one couldn’t help but see this art movement as not only a shift in an artistic mindset.. For the sake of argument an oversimplification of The De Stijl Movement can be summed up in a words, simple and basic but also layered and meaningful. All these three artists created something that looked simple and basic at first glance to its audience, but also deeply layered and meaningful to them and other like-minded people. Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie can be a perfect example of this, to a casual in dividual this painting can seem to have a simple color palette with basic linework. However for Mondrian it represented a meaningful event in his De Stijl career where he was so influenced by hearing Jazz, when he briefly came to New York City in America that he would later claim to have discovered what he would call Dynamic Rhythm.

Upon this new found discovery he made this painting hoping to layer it with this new concept. And it is this oversimplified core concept that is seen so much in our modern, contemporary society that nowadays it is considered by all means the golden standard of design. The more a contemporary design reflects these four principles the higher its acclaim by our society will be. A quick glance through all if not most of big and popular designs, whether it be logo design, layout design, type design, web design, automotive design, even shoe design, all the most popular designs of their respective fields will have been created using these four principles. Take Google’s series of logos for example, A quick look at them can display how the logos use only primary colors blue, red, yellow, and green.

Treating the as a bonus color outside of the three original De Stijl color palette, the logo’s basic color choice can be De Stijl.

Not only that but the logos in question can also be considered as being in the De Stijl geometric style, all while still conveying its visual communication requirements. It is with this overwhelming proof one could very easily see how the De Stijl Movement and its artist could be seen and hailed as one of the most influential art movements of all art history.

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Broadway Boogie-Woogie 1942-1943

FOOTNOTES 1

Overy, Paul. “De Stijl.” Thames & Hudson, 1991.

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Rietveld, Gerrit. “Gerrit Rietveld: A Centenary =.” Walker Art Center, 1988.

M. Kempski, “Theo van Doesburg,” Oxford Art Online, accessed March 24, 2023, https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/ gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000022729.

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Nancy J. Troy, “Theo van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World,” in The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 83, No. 4 (December 2011), pp. 935-936.

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G. F. Hartlaub, “Piet Mondrian and the De Stijl Movement,” The Burlington Magazine 102, no. 691 (1960): 471-472.

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Piet Mondrian, quoted in Michel Seuphor, Piet Mondrian: Life and Work (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1956), 264.

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Writen & designed: Erick Bustos Fonts: Adobe Caslon Pro, Cy 11