Chapter 12 - Clarity Certainty and Order

1. Chapter 12
CLARITY, CERTAINTY,
AND ORDER:
De Stijl and the Pursuit of
Geometric Abstraction

2. De Stijl Idea
De Stijl (Dutch for "The Style“)
• also known as neoplasticism,
• was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917 in Leiden.
• consisted of artists and architects.
• In a narrower sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of
work from 1917 to 1931 founded in the Netherlands.
• proponents advocated pure abstraction and universality by a
reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified
visual compositions to vertical and horizontal, using only black,
white and primary colors.
• is also the name of a journal that was published by the Dutch
painter, designer, writer, and critic Theo van Doesburg
• served to propagate the group's theories.
• In addition to van Doesburg, the group's principal members
were the painters Piet Mondrian and Vilmos Huszár

3. Mondrian: Seeking the Spiritual
Through the Rational
Early Work
• Although Mondrian’s name
is synonymous with
abstract paintings made
from squares and rectangles,
he started out painting
realistic scenes.
• He especially focused on
painting trees.
• De Stilj – the artistic
movement in 1920, is also
known as neoplasticism (the
new plastic art)
Piet Mondrian. Apple Tree
Pointillist Version 1909-09.
Oil on Composition Board.
22 3/8” x 29 ½”.
Dallas Museum of Art

4. Piet Mondrian Tree (Horizontal
Tree), 1911 Munson-Williams-
Proctor Institute, Museum of Art,
New York
• De Stilj advocates pure abstraction
and universality by a reduction to
the essentials of form and color.
• The compositions are reduced to
simplified visual compositions to
vertical and the horizontal
directions, and used only primary
colors of red, blue and yellow along
with monochrome, black and white
which express an ideal of harmony
and order.
• Mondrian radically simplified
representations in an effort to reflect
what he believed to be the order
underlying the visible world
Neoplasticism

5. Piet Mondrian, Composition in
colour A. 1917. Oil on canvas.
19 7/8” x 17 7/8”. Kröller-
Müller Museum. The
Netherlands
• In paintings of the 1920s, Mondrian
strictly limited his color palette to
black, white, and the three primary
colors: red, yellow, and blue. He used
asymmetrical balance and a
simplified pictorial vocabulary.
• His iconic abstract works remain
influential in design and familiar in
popular culture.
• With artist and architect Theo van
Doesburg, Mondrian founded the
journal De Stijl in 1917.

6. Piet Mondrian. Tableau, No.
II with Red, Blue, Black,,
Yellow, and grey. 1921-25.
Oil on canvas.
29 5/8 “ x 25 5/8”. Private
Collection, Zurich
• De Stijl, or "the style," was a movement
among Dutch artists and architects that
presented the ideal of total abstraction as
a model for spiritual harmony and order.
• Mondrian termed the resulting artwork
Neo-Plasticism, or the new plastic art.
• Elements in their paintings were limited to
straight lines, right angles, 3 primary
colors (red, blue, yellow) and 3 achromatic
colors (grey, white, and black).
• The De Stijl movement proved to have a
major international influence on
architecture, art, typography and interior
design.
The Break with de Stijl

7. Piet Mondrian. Broadway
Boogie Woogie. 1942-43.
Oil on canvas.
50 in × 50 in. Museum of
Modern Art, New York
• In 1925 Mondrian resigned from De Stijl.
• Mondrian was fascinated by American jazz,
particularly boogie-woogie. His late paintings
show a new energy, rhythm and complexity of
composition such as in Broadway Boogie-
Woogie (1943).
• In this painting Mondrian replaced the black
grid with yellow lines that create paths across
the canvas suggesting NY city's grid, the
movement of traffic, and blinking electric
lights, and the rhythms of jazz.
• His vision for a pure art is revealed in the
consistent development toward complete
abstraction.

8. Van Doesburg, de Stijl and
Elementarism
Theo van Doesburg. Card
Players. 1916–17.
Tempera on canvas. 46-1⁄2 ×
58”. Private collection.
• Theo Van Doesburg was one of the
founders and leading theorists of
De Stijl
• Van Doesburg developed a
personal version of De Stijl, called
Elementarism.
• In parallel he documented his
theories in a series of articles and
manifestos.
• In 1924, Van Doesburg wrote an
essay, Towards a Collective
Construction, in collaboration with
Cor van Eesteren (1897-1988).

9. Theo van Doesburg produced his
Composition IX (Abstract Structure of
Card Players) in 1917.
Composition IX only incorporates the
non-colors of black, white, and grey
with small amounts of blue.
The painting includes predominately
rectangles, but there are also unusual
shapes, which are uncharacteristic for
De Stijl paintings.
In Composition IX van Doesburg mixes
some of the new De Stijl style with
some of the older abstraction style.
Theo van Doesburg
Composition IX (Card Players)
1917. Oil on canvas
45-5⁄8 × 41-3⁄4”
Gemeentemuseum The Hague
the Netherlands

10. Theo van Doesburg, Sophie
Taeuber & Jean (Hans) Arp.
Interior, Café l’Aubette
1926–28. Strasbourg, destroyed
1940
In 1926 van Doesburg, Jean
Arp and Sophie Taeuber,
received the commission to
retrofit the interior of a mid-
eighteenth-century building
into Café Aubette—large
restaurant with a cinema and
dancehalls.
van Doesburg used this
project to explore his theory
of Elementarism.
Van Doesburgís schemes for
the interior walls of Café
Aubette were based on a grid
of gray planes, with vibrant
panels in primary colors.

11. De Stijl Realized: Sculpture
and Architecture
The De Stijl theory is applicable in sculpture
and architecture, where colored areas
correspond to solid and the non-colored
(neutral) areas match the empty/negative space.
Vantongerloo
Georges Vantongerloo ’s work focuses on the
relationships between pure, geometric shapes.
Vantongerloo made contact with the De Stijl
group while working in The Hague in 1917.
He immediately began experimenting with
abstraction. ‘If in sculpture, the interrelation of
volumes achieves unity’ he wrote, ‘it is because
everything is balanced.’
Georges Vantongerloo
Construction of Volume
Relations 1921 16 1/8 x 5
5/8 x 5 3/4". The Museum
of Modern Art, NY

12. Van ’t Hoff and Oud
J. J. P. Oud. Café de
Unie. 1925. Destroyed
1940. Rotterdam, the
Netherlands
Housing Complex in Hoek of Holland,
The Netherlands, Neoplasticismo.
The city of Rotterdam commissioned the Kiefhoek
housing group and invited Oud to assist with
designing dwellings for low income residents.
The site features two symmetric and curved
buildings facing the central estate.

13. Gerrit Rietveld. Living and
dining area. Schröder House
with furniture by Rietveld
Rietveld
Gerrit Rietveld, Dutch designer,
architect and painter, was born in
Utrecht in 1888,
In 1917 Gerrit Rietveld established a
furniture workshop in Utrecht.
By 1919, Gerrit Rietveld had joined
Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian,
and other artists to found "De Stijl“.
Rietveld became one of the most
important and influential artists in
the group.

14. Rietveld’s Schröder House (1924)
is the only building designed in
complete accordance with the De Stijl
aesthetic.
The house was commissioned in 1924
by Truus Schröder-Schrader, to be open
("without walls").
The house features the typical De Stijl
palette of primary colors, black, and
white, the building emphasizes its
architectural elements. Inside, the
rooms are divided by portable walls.
Rietveld's design focusess inward
instead of outward.
Gerrit Rietveld, View of exterior
of Schröder House, 1924
Concrete, brick, and plaster,
wood, steel girders. Utrecht,
The Netherlands

15. In the Red Blue Chair, Rietveld
examined the interaction of vertical
and horizontal planes.
The chair was originally designed in
1918, its color scheme of primary
colors (red, yellow, blue) plus black—
so closely associated with the de Stijl
group
Rietveld designed his furniture for
mass-production, aiming for
simplicity in construction.
The wood components of the Red
Blue Chair are in the standard lumber
sizes readily available at the time.
Gerrit Rietveld’s Red and Blue
Chair.1917.Painted wood.
34.5” high.

16. Van Esteren
Van Doesburg considered modern architecture and modern painting to be
complementary. Functional elements (doors, windows and roofs) were
designed to become an integral part of whole structure. The design is does
not distinguish between front and back, top and bottom.
Theo van Doesburg
and Cornelis van
Eesteren.
Project for the
rosenberg House,
1923.
The Museum of
Modern Art, New
York.