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De Stijl

De Stijl

Theo van DoesburgPainter, writer, poet, architect and founder/leader of De Stijl

Theo van Doesburg was born as Christian Emil Marie Küpper on 30 August 1883 in Utrecht as the son of the photographer Wilhelm Küpper and Henrietta Catherina Margadant. After a short training in acting and singing he decided to become a painter.

Although he considered himself to be a modern painter at that

time, his early work is in line with the Amsterdam

Impressionists and is influenced by Vincent van Gogh, both in

style and subject matter. This suddenly changed in 1913 after

reading Wassily Kandinsky's Rückblicke, in which he looks

back at his life as a painter from 1903–1913. It made him

realize there was a higher, more spiritual level in painting that

originates from the mind rather than from everyday life, and that abstraction is the only

logical outcome of this.

De Stijl also known as neoplasticism, was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917.

sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. Artist of the movement 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.

The name is supposedly derived from Gottfried Semper's Der Stil which was mistakenly believed to advocate materialism and functionalism. What it directly translates to is “The Style” .In general, De Stijl proposed ultimate simplicity and abstraction, both in architecture and painting. The works avoided symmetry and attained aesthetic balance by the use of opposition. This element of the movement embodies the second meaning of stijl; a post, or support; this is best demonstrated by the construction of crossing joints, most commonly seen in carpentry.

De Stijl The Style

The Style

The Style

The StyleThe Style

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