Theo van Doesburg as baby by Wilhelm Küpper Netherlands Institute for Art History 1501 AB12096 (recto)

In 1917, Theo van Doesburg founded the art journal De Stijl to form a new artistic collective that embraced utopian ideals of spiritual harmony. Like other avant-garde art movements at the time, De Stijl was a reaction against the horrors of World War I. Adopting the visual elements of Cubism and Suprematism, the anti-sentimentalism of Dada, and the Neo-Platonic mathematical theory of M. H. J Schoenmaekers, a mystical ideology that articulated the concept of "ideal" geometric forms, the exponents of De Stijl aspired to be far more than mere visual artists. De Stijl was utopian in nature in the sense that the members of De Stijl believed art to have transformative power. The journal provided the basis of the De Stijl movement, a Dutch group of artists and architects whose other leading members included Piet Mondrian, J. J. P. Oud, and Vilmos Huszar. The artists of De Stijl embraced an ideal fusion of form and function, geometric forms which were precisely rendered, therefore not only focusing on painting and sculpture but extending their artistic vision to all other art forms including literature, music, typography, and industrial design. De Stijl-inspired architecture, particularly by Rietveld and Oud, was built in the Netherlands throughout the 1920s. After Theo van Doesburg's death in 1931, De Stijl faded from existence. However, the movement's key ideas of pure geometric abstraction and the relationship between form and function contributed to modern art, design, and architecture.

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