De Stijl was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917 that advocated for pure abstraction and universality in art through simplifying compositions to horizontal and vertical lines using only primary colors and black and white. The movement was founded in the Netherlands and included artists and architects such as Piet Mondrian, Gerrit Rietveld, and Theo van Doesburg, publishing its theories in its journal also called De Stijl. As the group became more isolated in World War I, it focused on developing its philosophy of neoplasticism based on reducing forms and colors to their basics.
De Stijl was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917 that advocated for pure abstraction and universality in art through simplifying compositions to horizontal and vertical lines using only primary colors and black and white. The movement was founded in the Netherlands and included artists and architects such as Piet Mondrian, Gerrit Rietveld, and Theo van Doesburg, publishing its theories in its journal also called De Stijl. As the group became more isolated in World War I, it focused on developing its philosophy of neoplasticism based on reducing forms and colors to their basics.
De Stijl was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917 that advocated for pure abstraction and universality in art through simplifying compositions to horizontal and vertical lines using only primary colors and black and white. The movement was founded in the Netherlands and included artists and architects such as Piet Mondrian, Gerrit Rietveld, and Theo van Doesburg, publishing its theories in its journal also called De Stijl. As the group became more isolated in World War I, it focused on developing its philosophy of neoplasticism based on reducing forms and colors to their basics.
De Stijl was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917 that advocated for pure abstraction and universality in art through simplifying compositions to horizontal and vertical lines using only primary colors and black and white. The movement was founded in the Netherlands and included artists and architects such as Piet Mondrian, Gerrit Rietveld, and Theo van Doesburg, publishing its theories in its journal also called De Stijl. As the group became more isolated in World War I, it focused on developing its philosophy of neoplasticism based on reducing forms and colors to their basics.
De Stijl also known as neoplasticism, was a Dutch artistic
movement founded in 1917 in Amsterdam. The De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a narrower sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 founded in the Netherlands. De Stijl is also the name of a journal that was published by the Dutch painter, designer, writer, and critic Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) that served to propagate the group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), Vilmos Huszár (1884–1960), and Bart van der Leck (1876–1958), and the architects Gerrit Rietveld (1888–1964), Robert van’t Hoff (1887– 1979), and J. J. P. Oud (1890–1963). The artistic philosophy that formed a basis for the group's work is known as neoplasticism—the new plastic art (or Nieuwe Beelding in Dutch).
Proponents of De Stijl advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the
essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colours along with black and white.
Early history
From the flurry of new art movements that followed the
Impressionist revolutionary new perception of painting, Cubism arose in the early 20th 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 thus effectively isolated from the international art world.
After 1920
Around 1921, the group's character started to change. From the
time of van Doesburg's association with Bauhaus, other influences started playing a role.