A school of art originating in the Netherlands in 1917 and characterized by the use of rectangular shapes and primary colors.
[Dutch : de, the + stijl, style.]
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A school of art originating in the Netherlands in 1917 and characterized by the use of rectangular shapes and primary colors.
[Dutch : de, the + stijl, style.]
For more information on De Stijl, visit Britannica.com.
This avant-garde movement originated in neutral Holland during the First World War and became influential internationally in the 1920s. Founded by painter, designer, and writer Theo Van Doesburg in 1917 alongside a magazine of the same title, the De Stijl group consisted of architects, designers, and artists whose early aesthetic outlook built on that of the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian who had, in turn, been influenced by the ideas of the Cubist artists in Paris in the years immediately leading up to the First World War. Also influential on the group's early approach was the Dutch architect and designer H. P. Berlage who had looked to the ways in which the American architect and designer Frank Lloyd Wright had manipulated space and form in the early years of the 20th century. De Stijl design was characterized by a vocabulary that reflected a harmonius balance between verticals and horizontals, was elemental in its reliance on abstract forms and restricted palette of the primary colours of red, yellow, and blue, together with black and white, and was symbolically attuned to the methods of modern mass-production technology. The best-known designers of the group included Gerrit Rietveld, whose furniture, architecture, and interiors—notably his striking Schröder House in Utrecht of 1924—were the physical embodiment of the style; Bart van der Leck worked in a range of design media, including textiles; the Hungarian Vilmos Huiszár designed the first cover for the De Stijl magazine and was also involved with interiors and textiles; and Piet Zwart who was a typographer, advertising, and industrial designer. Theo Van Doesburg himself worked in a variety of media including architecture, interiors, furnishings, and graphics, and introduced the ideas of De Stijl to many of those connected with the Bauhaus whilst living in Weimar from 1921 to 1923. Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus director at the time, revealed a keen interest in the aesthetic in the lighting design for his office in 1923. The considerable interest in De Stijl principles was further evidenced by Van Doesburg's design for the Bauhaus Book number 6, published in 1925. Links were also established between De Stijl and the Constructivist designers El Lissitsky and László Moholy-Nagy in Berlin, with a special issue of De Stijl in September 1922 devoted to Lissitsky's work and Elementarism. This period, which also saw exhibitions of De Stijl architecture at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie L'Effort Moderne, marked the international phase of the movement and was also marked by the resignation from the group of Mondrian in 1925. Some of Van Doesburg's most striking designs were for the restaurant-nightclub the Café Aubette in Strasbourg, for which he designed the interiors and furnishings for ten rooms in 1926. Perhaps the most striking of these was the Cinema-Dance Hall, which embraced rectilinear planes of flat colour set within a dynamic 45-degree angle from the walls and ceilings.
An architectural movement from about 1917 to 1931, which originated in The Netherlands, that placed emphasis on functionalism, rationalism, and current methods of construction, in contrast to historical precedent and traditional methods of construction. This movement had a significant influence on the development of Modern architecture.
Bibliography
See study by H. L. C. Jaffé (1968).
De Stijl (in English generally pronounced /də staɪl/ (IPA) after style; from the Dutch for "the style" – Dutch pronunciation: IPA /də stɛɪl/), also known as neoplasticism, was a Dutch artistic movement, founded in 1917. In a narrower sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work created by a group of Dutch artists, from 1917 to 1931.[1][2] De Stijl is also the name of a journal which was published by the painter and critic Theo van Doesburg, propagating the group's theories. Next to Van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian and Bart van der Leck, and the architects Gerrit Rietveld and J.J.P. Oud. 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 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 colour — they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colors along with black and white.
The name De Stijl is supposedly derived from Gottfried Semper's Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten oder Praktische Ästhetik (1861-3) which Curl[2] suggests was mistakenly believed to advocate Materialism and Functionalism. In general, De Stijl proposed ultimate simplicity and abstraction, both in architecture and painting, by using only straight (horizontal and vertical) lines and rectangular forms. Their formal vocabulary was limited furthermore to the primary colours red, yellow and blue and the three primary values Black, white and grey. The works avoided symmetry and attained aesthetic balance by the use of opposition.
In many of the group's three-dimensional works, vertical and horizontal lines are positioned in layers or planes that do not intersect, thereby allowing each element to exist independently and unobstructed by other elements. This feature can be found in the Rietveld Schröder House and the Red and blue chair.
De Stijl movement was influenced by Cubist painting, as well as by the mysticism and the ideas about 'ideal' geometric forms (such as 'the perfect straight line') in the neoplatonic philosophy of the mathematician M. H. J. Schoenmaekers. The works of De Stijl would influence the Bauhaus style and the international style of architecture, as well as clothing and interior design.
In music, De Stijl was only an influence on the work of the composer Jakob van Domselaer, a close friend of Mondrian. Between 1913 and 1916 he composed his Proeven van Stijlkunst ('Experiments in Artistic Style'), inspired mainly by Mondrian's painting. This minimalistic and, at the time, revolutionary music defined 'horizontal' and 'vertical' musical elements, and aimed at balancing those two principles. Van Domselaer was relatively unknown in his lifetime, and did not play a significant role within De Stijl group.
From the flurry 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 thus effectively isolated from the international art world, and in particular from Paris, which was its centre at that time.
During that period, the painter Theo van Doesburg started looking for other artists to set up a journal and start an art movement. Van Doesburg was also a writer, poet and critic, who had been more successful writing about art than working as an independent artist. Quite adept at making new contacts, due to his flamboyant personality and outgoing nature, he had many useful connections in the art world.
Around 1915, Van Doesburg started meeting the artists that would eventually become the founders of the journal. He first met Piet Mondrian at an exhibition in the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum. Mondrian, who had moved to Paris in 1912 (and there changed his name from "Mondriaan"), had been visiting Holland when war broke out. He could not return to Paris, and was staying in the artists community of Laren, where he met Bart van der Leck, and regularly saw M. H. J. Schoenmaekers. In 1915, Schoenmaekers published Het nieuwe wereldbeeld ('The New Image of the World'), followed in 1916 by Beginselen der beeldende wiskunde ('Principles of Plastic Mathematics'). These two publications would greatly influence Mondrian and other members of De Stijl.
Van Doesburg also knew J.J.P. Oud and the Hungarian artist Vilmos Huszàr. In 1917, the cooperation of these artists, together with the poet Anthony Kok, resulted in the founding of De Stijl. The young architect Gerrit Rietveld joined the group in 1918.
During those first few years, the group was still relatively homogeneous, although Van der Leck left in 1918 due to artistic differences of opinion. 'Manifestos' were being published, signed by all members. The social and economic circumstances of the time formed an important source of inspiration for their theories. Their ideas about architecture were heavily influenced by Berlage and Frank Lloyd Wright.
The name Nieuwe Beelding was a term first coined in 1917 by Mondrian, who wrote a series of twelve articles called De Nieuwe Beelding in de schilderkunst ('Neo-Plasticism in Painting'), that were published in the journal De Stijl. In 1920 he published a book titled Le Neo-Plasticisme.
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. These influences were mainly Malevich and Russian Constructivism, to which not all members agreed. In 1924 Mondrian broke with the group after Van Doesburg proposed the theory of elementarism, proposing that the diagonal line was more vital than the horizontal and the vertical. In addition, De Stijl group acquired many new 'members'. Dadaist influences, such as I.K.Bonset's poetry and Aldo Camini's 'anti-philosophy' generated controversy as well. Only after Van Doesburg's death it was revealed that Bonset and Camini were two of his pseudonyms.
Theo van Doesburg died in Davos in 1931. His wife Nelly administered his estate.
Because of Van Doesburg's pivotal role within De Stijl, the group did not survive. Individual members remained in contact, but De Stijl could not exist without a strong central character. Thus it may be wrong to think of De Stijl as a close-knit group of artists. The members knew each other, but most communication took place by letter. For example, Mondrian and Rietveld never met in person.
Many, though not all, artists did stay true to the movement's basic ideas, even after 1931. Rietveld, for instance, continued designing furniture according to De Stijl principles, while Mondrian continued working in the style he had initiated around 1920. Van der Leck, on the other hand, went back to figurative compositions after his departure from the group.
The De Stijl influence on architecture remained considerable, long after 1931. Mies van der Rohe was among the most important proponents of its ideas. Between 1923 and 1924, Rietveld designed the Rietveld Schröder House, the only building to have been created completely according to De Stijl principles. Examples of Stijl-influenced works by J.J.P. Oud can be found in Rotterdam (Café De Unie) and Hoek van Holland.
De Stijl is still considered to be one of the most important Dutch contributions to art. Ironically, while its proponents' aim was to create an 'international' style, De Stijl is often seen as typically Dutch.
Works of De Stijl members are scattered all over the world, but De Stijl-themed exhibitions are organised regularly. Museums with large De Stijl collections include the Gemeentemuseum at The Hague, which owns the world's most extensive (although not exclusively De Stijl-related) Mondrian collection, and the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum, where many works by Rietveld and Van Doesburg are on display. The Centraal Museum of Utrecht has the largest Rietveld collection worldwide. It also owns the Rietveld Schröder House, Rietveld's adjacent 'show house', and the Rietveld Schröder Archives.
This list is not exhaustive. Because of the loose associations many artists had with De Stijl, it is difficult to get a complete overview of contributors.
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