De Stijl

The De Stijl movement, even though it was created all the way back in 1917, continues to influence art and design of today. From a simple painting to a website, the De Stijl movement has changed the course of history. 

De Stijl (Which means “The Style” in Dutch) was a popular Dutch art movement in which artworks were broken down into simple shapes, only using horizontal and vertical lines to make up squares and rectangles and only using black, white, gray and the primary colors. The movement was both an architectural movement, and an avant-garde artistic movement. Many examples of De Stijl have been seen in typography and textiles as well as art and architecture. (Wolf, 2011)

Piet Mondrian, Composition A (1923)

The movement itself was founded by a group of artists but was co-founded by Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg in 1917. Some other notable artists in the group were Vilmos Huszar, J.P.P Oud, and Gerrit Rietfield. At its peak, the group had over 100 artists and architects. (Provost, 2023)

Theo Van Doesburg
(1883 - 1931)

Some inspirations for the movement were cubism and impressionism, but its main inspiration was WWI. Van Doesburg (who was stuck in the neutral country Netherlands) felt isolated from any major art movements that were happening around Europe at the time. The movement itself was a reaction to the war, the group of artists viewed art as utopian. (De Stijl 2011)

Along with the art movement, Mondrian and Van Doesburg created the De Stijl journal which featured the movement's manifesto and outline of their philosophy. They argued that pure artistic elements, such as primary colors, non colors, and lines, were the ideal elements for art. This definition of the De Stijl would eventually be referred to as Neo-plasticism. (Tate, Neo-plasticism)

Manifesto of DeStijl published in the journal of the same name. (1918)

Even though the general criteria for a De Stjil artwork was primary colors and straight lines, Van Doesburg incorporated diagonal lines in his pieces, which would later be the groundworks of Elementarism. This caused Mondrian to leave the De Stijl artist collective and continue to make his own work until his death in 1944. Van Doesburg, continued to stay with De Stijl, also dabbled in other artistic movements.

Piet Mondrian
(1872 - 1944)

Van Doesburg, although very active in the De Stijl movement, was a member of the Dada movement. He published Dada poems in the De Stijl journal under his alter ego I.K Bonset. Even as an active member of the De Stijl movement, his death caused the group to fall apart, thus ending the era of De Stijl. (Wolfe, 2022)

Now, De Stijl has made a comeback of sorts in the form of web design. Mostly because of the simplicity of how web design needs to be for users. There are even many De Stijl themed fonts, of which only use vertical and horizontal lines. The simplicity of De Stijl is even used in interior design, album covers, and probably anything you can imagine. 

Even though the original principles of De Stijl were about using lines and primary colors to show the purest form of art, many aspects of De Stijl in the present day go against the original principles that were laid out. The main principle that gets erased today is that the infamous De Stijl pattern is printed completely for decoration purposes rather than interpreting art in its purest form. (Berry, 2021)

To conclude, the De Stijl art movement was a huge art (and philosophical) movement of the 20th century. The principle of using primary colors, shapes, and lines, shaped the future aesthetics of design. It reminds us that simplicity can really go a long way.