De Stijl

De Stijl (/də ˈstaɪl/, Dutch: [də ˈstɛil]; 'The Style') was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 by a group of artists and architects based in Leiden (Theo van Doesburg, J. J. P. Oud), Voorburg (Vilmos Huszár, Jan Wils) and Laren (Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck).

De Stijl was also the name of a journal – published by the Dutch painter, designer, writer, poet and critic Theo van Doesburg – that propagated the group's theories. Along with van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian, Vilmos Huszár, Bart van der Leck, the architects J.J.P. Oud, Jan Wils, Gerrit Rietveld, Robert van 't Hoff, the sculptor and painter Georges Vantongerloo, and the poet and writer Antony Kok.

The art theory that formed the basis for the group's work was originally known as Nieuwe Beelding in Dutch; it was later translated to Neoplasticism in English. This theory was subsequently extended to encompass the principles of Elementarism.

Mondrian set forth the principles of neoplasticism in his essay "Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art". He wrote, "this new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and colour. On the contrary, it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and colour, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary colour". With these constraints, his art allowed only primary colours and non-colours, only squares and rectangles, only straight and horizontal or vertical lines. The De Stijl movement initially adopted Mondrian's principles until around 1924 when it rejected some of them and adopted those of Elementarism, which included the use of dynamic diagonal lines, allowing colour to infuse more energy into a work, and the rejection of harmonious and balanced relationships.

The name De Stijl is supposedly derived from Gottfried Semper's Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten oder Praktische Ästhetik (1861–1863), which Curl suggests was mistakenly believed to advocate materialism and functionalism.

Nieuwe beelding [new vision], or neoplasticism, saw itself as reaching beyond the changing appearance of natural things to bring an audience into intimate contact with an immutable core of reality, a reality that was not so much a visible fact as an underlying spiritual vision. Initially, De Stijl proposed this ultimate simplicity and abstraction, both in architecture and painting, by using only straight horizontal and vertical lines and rectangular forms. Its vocabulary was limited 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. This element of the tension embodied the second meaning of stijl: 'a post, jamb or support'; this is best exemplified by the construction of crossing joints, most commonly seen in carpentry.

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 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 M. H. J. Schoenmaekers. The De Stijl movement was also influenced by Neopositivism. The works of De Stijl would influence the Bauhaus style and the international style of architecture as well as clothing and interior design. However, it did not follow the general guidelines of an "-ism" (e.g., Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism), nor did it adhere to the principles of art schools like the Bauhaus; it was a collective project, a joint enterprise that changed over time, resulting in new "elementary design" principles which Van Doesburg called Elementarism.