De Stijl Art and Paintings

De Stijl is Dutch for “The Style.” In art it means the abstract style of a group of Dutch painters, designers and architects who, from 1917 to 1931, made pictures from straight horizontal and vertical lines, flat rectangles and the primary colors with black, white and gray. Tate notes that De Stijl began as a magazine, founded in 1917 by Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, and that Mondrian's name for this kind of painting was Neoplasticism.

Sources: Tate: De Stijl · Tate: Neo-plasticism

De Stijl was a circle of Dutch abstract artists and the magazine they published, promoting an art of strict horizontals and verticals, Tate explains. Its painters, architects and designers wanted to build a new society after the First World War, with one international style for art and design alike. The Getty's art vocabulary describes a movement that used pure abstract form to express the universal.

Sources: Tate: De Stijl · Tate Modern: Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde · Getty AAT: De Stijl

De Stijl paintings use only straight lines that run horizontally or vertically, flat squares and rectangles, and red, yellow and blue with black, white and gray; nothing in them depicts a real object. Tate lists exactly these elements for Neoplasticism, Mondrian's name for the style. From about 1924 van Doesburg added the diagonal, which split the group, and the same rules were used for furniture, interiors and buildings, such as the Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht.

Sources: Tate: Neo-plasticism · Guggenheim: van Doesburg, Counter-Composition XIII · Rietveld Schröder House (Centraal Museum)

Theo van Doesburg founded De Stijl in 1917 as a magazine, which he edited from Leiden, and Tate names Piet Mondrian as its co-founder; Mondrian set out his ideas in a long essay that ran through the magazine's first year. The Rijksmuseum Bulletin adds that the poet Antony Kok, the architect J. J. P. Oud and the painter Vilmos Huszár helped van Doesburg found it, and that Bart van der Leck wrote for the first issues.

Sources: Kunstmuseum Den Haag: Card Players · Tate: De Stijl · Tate: Neo-plasticism · Rijksmuseum Bulletin: Nota Bene: De Stijl (2017)

De Stijl started in 1917 with the first issue of its magazine and ended with Theo van Doesburg's death in 1931; Tate notes that he kept the magazine going until then, and the Rijksmuseum Bulletin adds that a last issue in his honor followed in 1932. Mondrian had already left the group in the mid-1920s, after van Doesburg brought the diagonal into his paintings. Kunstmuseum Den Haag says the abstract art van Doesburg laid the basis for became influential in the 1930s.

Sources: Tate: De Stijl · Rijksmuseum Bulletin: Nota Bene: De Stijl (2017) · Guggenheim: Mondrian, Composition No. 1: Lozenge with Four Lines · Kunstmuseum Den Haag: Card Players

Neoplasticism is the term Mondrian adopted for his own abstract painting, made with only horizontal and vertical lines, primary colors and the non-colors black, white and gray. It comes from the Dutch de nieuwe beelding and basically means new art, Tate explains. The two overlap but are not the same: De Stijl is the group and its magazine, and Tate applies Neoplasticism to the work of the whole De Stijl circle at least until Mondrian broke with it, while Mondrian went on painting in his Neoplastic style after he left.

Sources: Tate: Neo-plasticism · Guggenheim: Mondrian, Composition No. 1: Lozenge with Four Lines

Piet Mondrian was a co-founder of De Stijl, after a Cubist phase in Paris, and wrote its theory: in the magazine's first year he published the essay in which he defined Neoplasticism, Tate notes. By the early 1920s, the Guggenheim says, he limited his pictures to off-white grounds divided by black horizontal and vertical lines, with blocks of single primary colors. He lived in Paris from 1919 and broke with the group over van Doesburg's diagonals, but kept painting in the same language.

Sources: Tate: Neo-plasticism · Guggenheim: Mondrian, Composition No. 1: Lozenge with Four Lines · Tate: Piet Mondrian

De Stijl's central figures are its founders, Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) and Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931). The Rijksmuseum Bulletin names the others who joined them: the poet Antony Kok, the architect J. J. P. Oud and the painter Vilmos Huszár from the start, with Bart van der Leck among the first contributors; the architects Jan Wils and Robert van 't Hoff, the Belgian sculptor Georges Vantongerloo and the Italian painter Gino Severini during the first year; and the furniture maker Gerrit Rietveld in 1919.

Sources: Tate: De Stijl · Rijksmuseum Bulletin: Nota Bene: De Stijl (2017) · Kunstmuseum Den Haag: Card Players

No. De Stijl was a Dutch group built around a magazine, founded in 1917; the Bauhaus was a German school of art, architecture and design that Walter Gropius opened in Weimar in 1919, Tate explains. Both wanted to bring art into everyday life, and their paths crossed: Tate's 2010 van Doesburg exhibition looked at his efforts to influence the Bauhaus.

Sources: Tate: De Stijl · Tate: Bauhaus · Tate Modern: Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde

De Stijl belongs to modernism, not to Art Deco. Tate calls Mondrian, with Malevich, a pioneer of pure abstract painting, and De Stijl rejected any depiction of real things. Art Deco was a design style of the 1920s and 1930s in furniture, the decorative arts and architecture; it was geometric too, but Tate notes that it drew on Cubism, ancient Egyptian and Aztec art and the design of modern ships, trains and cars.

Sources: Tate: Abstract art · Tate: Neo-plasticism · Tate: Art deco

Cubism was the main starting point. Mondrian lived in Paris from 1912 to 1914 and, Tate says, carried Cubism to the point of abstraction; Tate also calls Cubism a starting point for Neoplasticism. Van Doesburg was struck by Wassily Kandinsky's abstract paintings in 1913, Kunstmuseum Den Haag notes. The First World War mattered too: the Cleveland Museum of Art says Mondrian believed abstract compositions could help build a more harmonious society after it.

Sources: Tate: Piet Mondrian · Tate: Cubism · Kunstmuseum Den Haag: Card Players · Cleveland Museum of Art: Mondrian, Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue

Yes. Its artists wanted a new art for the whole of society, including design and architecture, Kunstmuseum Den Haag says, and they also made stained glass, typography and interiors. Gerrit Rietveld designed his Red and Blue Chair around 1919, and in 1924 he designed a house in Utrecht with its owner, Truus Schröder, using horizontal and vertical lines and all the primary colors with white, gray and black. Rietveld died in 1964, so pictures of his designs are still in copyright and we do not show them.

Sources: Kunstmuseum Den Haag: Card Players · Tate Modern: Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde · Rietveld Schröder House (Centraal Museum)

Yes for Mondrian and van Doesburg. Mondrian died in 1944 and van Doesburg in 1931, so their works are public domain wherever copyright lasts 70 years after death, and in the United States works published before 1931 are public domain too. Bart van der Leck, Vilmos Huszár, Gerrit Rietveld and Georges Vantongerloo died between 1958 and 1965, so their work enters the public domain in those countries only between 2029 and 2036. Paintings Mondrian made after 1930 may still be protected in the United States, so our De Stijl collection stops at 1930.

Sources: Cornell University Library: Copyright Term and the Public Domain · Kunstmuseum Den Haag: Card Players · Kunstmuseum Den Haag: Tableau I (Dutch)

Kunstmuseum Den Haag in The Hague holds the largest Mondrian collection in the world, the museum says, along with works by Rietveld, van der Leck and Huszár, and it shows van Doesburg's Card Players. The Rijksmuseum Bulletin names the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Centraal Museum in Utrecht among the main Dutch De Stijl collections, and the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo holds Mondrian's Composition in Color A. In New York, the Guggenheim files works by Mondrian and van Doesburg under De Stijl.

Sources: Kunstmuseum Den Haag: Card Players · Kunstmuseum Den Haag: Compositie met groot rood vlak (Dutch) · Rijksmuseum Bulletin: Nota Bene: De Stijl (2017) · Kröller-Müller Museum: Mondrian, Composition in colour A · Guggenheim: De Stijl (collection by movement)