DAY 243

ART THROUGH THE AGES

De Stijl & Neo Plasticism

THE QUEST FOR UNIVERSAL ORDER

Let’s get flat! With the beauty of a straight black line; the sobriety of a white ground; and the simplicity of red, yellow and blue, the reductionist De Stijl movement sought absolute “pure” abstraction in painting, sculpture, and design. Clean, flat geometric shapes and black intersecting lines were the vehicles to explore the unity the artists felt between humankind and the universe.

When World War I began, artists in the Netherlands were cut off from the rest of the art world. In this isolation, they were able to incubate and create their own style. Despite the chaos of war surrounding them, they found order, rationality and harmony in their art. Some studied theosophy, which guided their search for the mystical nature of God and how to communicate that through art. Coming from a Dutch Protestant history of iconoclasm, austerity came naturally.

In reducing painting and design to its most elemental state, the De Stijl artists found what they considered to be “universal beauty”²⁶. By opposing vertical and horizontal black lines on a white ground to form an asymmetrical grid, Piet Mondrian, a leading member, believed that he was uncovering “the underlying structure of nature”²⁷. Carefully placed primary colors occupied squares within the grid, balancing one another by varying size and quantity. Everything had its place and purpose.

Though great achievements were made, when artistic differences arose among the artists regarding the use of diagonal lines over verticals, they simply had to go their separate ways. —ARR

Selected artists: Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, J.J.P. Oud, Gerrit Rietveld, Georges Vantongerloo