Over the past year, museums, galleries, auction houses, and even one entire town have paid homage to the founding of the ground-breaking movement of art and architecture known as De Stijl. The founding of De Stijl in the Netherlands is often simply attributed to Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, but alongside was Theo van Doesburg, a painter who promoted De Stijl through architecture. There were other artists, too, including Vilnos Huzzan and Max Burchartz as well as architectural practitioners Gerrit Thomas Rietveld and J.J.P. Oud.
It was Mondrian, though, as an art theorist, who gave it all a label, this non-representational art form that he called Neoplasticism, quite literally the “new plastic art.” De Stijl in English is “the style.” And it was.
Throughout the 20th century, De Stijl became closely associated with Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, followed by names like Pollock, Rothko, and de Kooning. It also expressed itself in modernist architecture and the many thousands of homes and buildings that incorporate these lines and features today.
The centennial celebration can still be enjoyed in many ways, and you can start your journey with these resources available online: