De Stijl
De Stijl (pronunciation [ də ˈstɛɪl ]) was a Dutch group of painters, architects and designers who founded an artists' association and a magazine of the same name in 1917 in Leiden .
Founding members were the painter and art theorist Theo van Doesburg , the painters Piet Mondrian and Georges Vantongerloo , the architects Robert van 't Hoff , JJP Oud and Jan Wils , the painters Vilmos Huszár and Bart van der Leck , and the poet Antony Kok . By 1922, eight of the initial ten members left the group, but new ones were added, including the architects Gerrit Rietveld (1918) and Cornelis van Eesteren (1922) and the painter Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart (1924).
Art theories
The group committed itself to a geometric-abstract, “ascetic” form of representation in art and architecture and a purism limited to functionality , which, similar to the German Bauhaus , to which there is a close relationship in terms of ideas and art history, principles for a principle applicable to all areas of design Set up aesthetics. Her ideas were influenced by Cubism and Wassily Kandinsky's art theory publications .
In 1916, Piet Mondrian made the acquaintance of the mathematician and theosophist MHJ Schoenmaekers (1875–1944), who defined the concept of style as “the general in spite of the particular”, and his vulgar philosophical works Het Geloof van den nieuwen Mensch ( Faith in the new people ) and Het nieuwe wereldbeeld (The New Worldview) Mondrian read during his theosophical studies. Mondrian borrowed a large part of Schoenmaekers' extremely clear terminology for his essays published in “De Stijl” and owed him the main term “ nieuwe beelding ”, which in Germany is very poor with “new plastic” or “neo-plasticism” instead of “ new design ”, is translated.
The concern of the group was to completely turn away from the representation principles of traditional art and to work out a new, completely abstract design language based on the variation of a few elementary principles of visual design (horizontal / vertical, large / small, light / dark and the primary colors). That means the reduction of colors to the three primary colors red, yellow and blue as well as the non-colors black, gray and white. De Stijl's concepts were not only effective in the fine arts and architecture, but also in the design of furniture and other everyday objects. The Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht was built in 1924.
Red and blue chair, designed by Gerrit Rietveld, 1917
Theo van Doesburg, Compositie XXII , 1922
The Rietveld Schröder House in Utrecht
manifest
Doesburg and Mondrian used elements from various philosophers in their theories of art, especially Plato and Hegel, which they described in their fundamental principles of dualism - between the objective and the subjective, abstraction and nature, asymmetry and symmetry, four-dimensionality and three-dimensionality, color and non-color, fixed. Accordingly, their 1918 Manifesto I read :
1. There is an old and a new time consciousness. The old is directed towards the individual. The new is directed towards the universal. The struggle between the individual and the universal is evident both in the world war and in contemporary art.
2. The war destructs the old world with its content: individual supremacy in every area.
3. The new art has brought to light what the new consciousness of time contains: the equal relationship between the universal and the individual.
4. The new awareness of time is ready to be realized in everything, also in external life.
5. Tradition, dogmas and the predominance of the individual (the natural) stand in the way of this realization.
6. That is why the founders of the new education call on all who believe in the reform of art and culture to destroy these obstacles to development, just as in the new visual arts - by abolishing the natural form - they eliminated them that stands in the way of the pure expression of art, the extreme consequence of every concept of art.
7. The artists of the present, driven by one and the same consciousness in the whole world, took part in a spiritual [spiritual] field in the world war against the predominance of individualism, of arbitrariness. They therefore sympathize with everyone who, spiritually or materially, argue for the formation of an international unity in life, art and culture.
8. The organ “The Style”, founded for this purpose, seeks to contribute to putting the new view of life in a pure light.
9. Participation of all is possible through:
I. As proof of consent, submission (to the editorial team) of name (exactly), address, occupation.
II. Contributions in the broadest sense (critical, philosophical, architectural, scientific, literary, musical etc. as well as reproductive) for the monthly magazine ›Der Stil‹.
III. Translation into other languages and dissemination of the views published in ›Der Stil‹.
Staff signatures:
Antony Kok, poet
Theo van Doesburg, painter
Piet Mondriaan, painter
Robt. van 't Hoff; Architect
G. Vantongerloo, sculptor
Vilmos Huszar, painter
Jan Wils, architect
Art magazine
The art magazine De Stijl, edited by Theo van Doesburg, appeared monthly from June 16, 1917 with interruptions until 1928. Years before the magazine was closed, the group began to break up. In 1925 Mondrian, like Jan Wils years earlier, left the company because of differences of opinion with van Doesburg, since in 1923 van Doesburg had started to use diagonal elements in his work, which Mondrian refused. Other artists also went new ways and thus contributed to spreading and further developing the “De Stijl” theory. After van Doesburg's death in 1931, a special edition of the magazine was published in his honor.
architecture
Although the De Stijl movement, in contrast to the Amsterdam School, initially assumed an artistic confrontation, by transferring its artistic principles to the field of architecture it soon produced comparably significant examples of modern building. One of the first architectural expressions of the movement is Robert van 't Hoff's Villa Henny in Huis ter Heide near Utrecht (1914–16), which is as groundbreaking as Charles-Édouard Jeanneret's Maison Dom- in O. With its strictly cubic-linear, unadorned shapes and its distinctive emphasis on the horizontal, it is an important pioneer of functionalist modern architecture.
Trivia
The American band The White Stripes made reference to the artists' association with their album De Stijl . The band dedicated the album to the blues musicians Blind Willie McTell and Gerrit Rietveld.
See also
literature
- HLC Jaffé: De Stijl 1917–1931. The Dutch contribution to modern art . In: Bauwelt Foundations . tape 7 . Ullstein, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main / Vienna 1965. New edition 1982: ISBN 3528086076
- Carsten-Peter Warncke: The ideal as art. De Stijl 1917-1931. Taschen, Cologne 1990, 216 pages, ISBN 3822804169 .
- Michael White: De Stijl and Dutch Modernism ( Critical Perspectives in Art History ). Manchester University Press, 176 pages, ISBN 0719061628 (English)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Pronunciation
- ↑ Michel Seuphor: Piet Mondrian. Life and work , M. DuMont Schauberg publishing house, Cologne 1957, p. 134
- ↑ De Stijl ( Memento of September 4, 2004 in the Internet Archive ), www.tate.org.uk, accessed on February 13, 2013