Theo van Doesburg
Theo van Doesburg (born August 30, 1883 in Utrecht ; † March 7, 1931 in Davos , Switzerland ), actually Christian Emil Marie Küpper , was a Dutch painter , writer , architect , sculptor , typographer and art theorist .
Van Doesburg created geometrically structured paintings and was thus one of the founders of abstract painting . In 1917 he was a co-founder of the De Stijl artists' association . He later joined Dadaism for a short time .
life and work
Van Doesburg coined the term concrete art and founded the De Stijl artist movement together with Piet Mondrian , Georges Vantongerloo , Robert van 't Hoff , JJP Oud , Jan Wils , Bart van der Leck and others in 1917 .
Van Doesburg originally wanted to be an actor , but studied painting from 1899. He exhibited for the first time in 1908. Like Mondrian, he created geometrically flat paintings. He got to know Walter Gropius and Bruno Taut and from 1921 to 1922 he taught private courses on architectural design at the Weimar Bauhaus . Gropius had refused a permanent position as a master craftsman, but Doesburg influenced other teachers at the Bauhaus.
In 1922 he introduced Dadaism in the Netherlands and published - under the pseudonym IK Bonset - the Dadaist magazine Mecano . On January 10, 1923, he initiated the "Dada campaign" in the Netherlands with the first Dada evening in The Hague . The last Dada soirée took place on April 13th in Drachten , Frisia . In that year 1923, the actions of Dadaism finally ended.
In 1927/28, together with Hans Arp and his wife Sophie Taeuber-Arp, he designed the interior decoration for the Aubette café and dance hall on Kléberplatz in Strasbourg as a total work of art following the De Stijl movement. It was destroyed in the late 1930s because it did not suit the public's taste and was restored from 1989 to 1994.
In 1931 he was in Paris, together with Antoine Pevsner , Naum Gabo , Auguste Herbin and Georges Vantongerloo, a founding member of the artists' association Abstraction-Création in Paris, which was replaced by the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in 1946 . In 1947 a retrospective of his work took place in Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century gallery in New York .
In 1955 his works were posthumously represented at Documenta 1 in Kassel .
Exhibitions
- 1908 in The Hague.
- 1923 Exhibition of architectural models by van Doesburg and van Eestern in the "Galerie de l'Effort", Paris.
- 1947 (posthumous) retrospective, Art of This Century , New York.
- 1955 (posthumously) Documenta 1 , Kassel.
- 1968 (posthumously) Theo van Doesburg 1883–1931 , Stedelijk van Abbe Museum.
- 1976 (posthumous) Malevich to Mondrian and their circles. From the Wilhelm Hack Collection Cologne / Ludwigshafen am Rhein. Cologne Art Association.
Works (selection)
architecture
- 1918 with JJP Oud : Holiday home “De Vonk”, Noordwijkerhout
- 1923 with Cornelis van Eesteren : Huis van Zessen, Alblasserdam
- 1927/28 with Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp: "Cinébal" by Aubette, Strasbourg (destroyed, reconstructed)
- 1930 Architect's house, Meudon-Val-Fleury
painting
- 1914 girl with buttercups
- 1918 rhythm of a Russian dance
- 1925/26 Contra-Composition XIII
literature
- Jo-Anne Danzker: Theo van Doesburg. Painter, architect . Prestel Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-7913-2404-7 .
- Matthias Noell: In the laboratory of modernity. Theo van Doesburg's studio home in Meudon . gta Verlag Zürich 2010, ISBN 978-3-85676-246-9 .
- Nina Gülicher, Reinhard Spieler (ed.): Hackstücke # 3. Theo van Doesburg. Composition . Wienand Verlag, Cologne 2012. ISBN 978-3-86832-098-5 .
Web links
- Theo van Doesburg at Google Arts & Culture
- Literature by and about Theo van Doesburg in the catalog of the German National Library
- kunstaspekte.de
- Materials by and about Theo van Doesburg in the documenta archive
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Doesburg, Theo van |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Küpper, Christian Emil Marie (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Dutch painter and art theorist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 30, 1883 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Utrecht |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 7, 1931 |
| Place of death | Davos , Switzerland |