ae | PAUL OVERY

studio vista|dutton PICTUREBACK 15s (75p) $2.45

 ee
Seer
47641|

EACH .
‘A FINE WILL BE CHARGED FOR
|
OVERDUE MATERIAL.
De Stijl was the name of the magazine founded in 1917 by the
Dutch painter, designer and writer, Theo van Doesburg and
edited by him until his death in 1931. De Stijl is Dutch for The
Style and many of those who contributed to the magazine or who
were associated with De Stijl showed its characteristic style in
their work—rectangularity and the use of pure colour, the
absence of decoration, a belief in abstraction and a humanism
that rejected the natural for the man-made. Amongst those
associated with De Stijl were the architects Rietveld, Oud, van
t'Hoff and van Eesteren, the painters Mondrian, van der Leck and
Huszar, and the sculptor Vantongerloo.
Previous accounts have tended to overstress the importance of
painting in De Stijl (and of the work of Mondrian in particular).
Without doubting that Mondrian is one of the few really great
modern painters, Paul Overy attempts to redress the balance by
emphasizing the contribution of the architects and designers
and van Doesburg himself.
De Stijl was one of the formative factors in the developments of
the ‘twenties and ‘thirties in architecture, product and graphic
design and in painting and sculpture. Its impact is still felt today.
In this account, De Stijl is not treated as an isolated phenomenon
but related to the international and Dutch background, to Art
Nouveau, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism and the Bauhaus.

Paul Overy was born in 1940. He has taught in schools and art
colleges and written regular art criticism and reviews for The
Listener, The Financial Times and Art and Artists. He has contri-
buted articles and reviews to various other magazines and has
worked in television. He has recently published a critical study of
Kandinsky.
 .
'
Van Doesburg (right) and Van Eesteren working on models for
the De Stijl exhibition in Paris, 1923
Paul Overy

studio vista|dutton pictureback

General editor David Herbert
© Paul Overy 1969
Designed by Gillian Greenwood
Published in Great Britain by Studio Vista Limited
Blue Star House, Highgate Hill, London N 19
and in the USA by E. P. Dutton and Co. Inc.
201 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003
Set in 8D Univers on 11 pt
Made and printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd.
Bungay, Suffolk

SBN: 289 79622 9 (cased)

289 79621 O (paperback)
 Contents

Introduction 7

The international background 16

The Dutch background 36 |

De Stijl: development and ideals 57

De Stijl: achievements 95

fF
NY
W
a Conclusions 148
Acknowledgements 164
Index 166
|
Introduction

Gerrit Rietveld’s red-blue armchair is the most compact visual

statement of the principles of De Stijl. Visually separate and dis-
crete, each square-sectioned wooden member which makes up the
structural frame of the chair extends beyond its point of juncture,
probing the space that surrounds the chair as well as defining the
space that flows freely through it.
There is no dovetailing. Where the wooden rails cross they are
held together by wooden pins. The plywood planks of seat and
back are fixed to this frame. The chair discloses its structure as
clearly as a skeleton or scaffolding. The seat is painted blue, the
back red. The frame is black with the sawn ends of each rail
painted yellow. Rietveld wrote about this chair :‘The construction
is attuned to the parts to insure that no part dominates or is sub-
ordinate to the others. In this way, the whole stands freely and
clearly in space, and the form stands out from the material.’
De Stijl is Dutch for The Style. Not style as implied in ‘styling’
(car styling, etc)—a package wrapped round the working parts, the
icing on the cake—but Style as the integral relationship of the parts
to the whole and of the whole to the parts. ‘Unity in Plurality’ was
the definition of Style given by the Dutch architect H.P.Berlage
whose buildings and writings were important influences in the
early development of De Stijl.

Gerrit Rietveld Red-blue armchair, 1917 or 1918

Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
 Ne .
NG

suppres

suzennes WISE:

a
Sey,

TIN 7

Theo van Doesburg Counter-composition 1925

Oil. Van Doesburg’s diagonals were more dynamic and disturbing than those
of Rietveld and van der Leck. Collection Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague
8
CC

6OO
CNG
Ne
SO
SNe
CES

.
ye NZ:
NG
<
TO

. oF :
©

.
OR

ON
~~ SO
ONC y
.
UNC
 ee
Oe
CO a
-

POMPAS ETM

Vilmos Huszar Composition De Stijl 1916

Oil. The painting on which the cover of De Stij/ was based until 1921. Loan
Dienst voor’s Rijks Verspride Kuntsvoorwerpen. Collection Haags
Gemeentemuseum, The Hague

De Stijl was not a group in the usual sense. It takes its name from
the magazine edited by the Dutch painter, designer and writer,
Theo van Doesburg from 1917 to 1931. Many of those associated
with De Stijl met only briefly and some of the most important
like Rietveld and Mondrian never met at all. Many disassociated
themselves from De Stijl fairly early in their careers, like
10
 . OK
©

Bart van der Leck Composition 1918

Oil. Diagonals appeared early in De Stijl painting (as in Rietveld’s chair).
Collection Tate Gallery, London

Bart van der Leck and J.P.Oud, but their work did not change
fundamentally as a result of this. Sometimes their most typical De
Stijl work was produced after they had left. That they continued to
respect van Doesburg even when they had disagreed or fallen
out with him, or he with them, is clear from their tributes to
him in the final, memorial issue of the De Stj/ magazine.
’ 1
Georges Vantongerloo Construction S x Q 1933
lron. The planes fly out like the black rails of Rietveld’s chair. Courtesy
Marlborough Gallery, London

In the later development of De Stijl, van Doesburg ‘recruited’

some artists whose work had little in common with the earlier
phase of De Stijl, and in retrospect he tended to exaggerate the
extent to which there had been a coherent group. In a sense, only
van Doesburg himself and the magazine he edited were ‘De Stijl’.
When he died in 1931 the magazine ceased publication shortly
afterwards and De Stijl as a compelling idea died with him, but its
spirit remained in the work of many of those who had been asso-
ciated with it or who had been inspired or influenced by its ideals.
The style remained.
12
Piet Mondrian Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue 1936-42
The three-dimensional complexity of Rietveld’s chair is achieved in two
dimensions. Collection Tate Gallery, London
13
 In another sense De Stijl was only the work of those artists and
architects whose work embodied the principles of De Stijl, who
had its style. But these principles were not static ; it was a style that
evolved. Although Mondrian left De Stijl when van Doesburg in-
troduced the diagonal element and justified it in theoretical state-
ments, this was not a betrayal of the earlier principles of horizontal—
vertical, but an intelligent development of it which is already fore-
shadowed in 1918 in Rietveld’s red-blue chair or van der Leck’s
paintings.
In the first issue of the De Stij/ magazine in 1917 van Doesburg
had written : ‘For the propagation ofthe beautiful, a spiritual group
is more necessary than a social one.’ Despite the emphasis on the
universal and the abstract in statements and essays, De Stijl re-
mained a loose association of individualists.
When Rietveld designed his red-blue chair he was not yet asso-
ciated with De Stijl. When J.P.Oud designed the Café Unie in Rot-
terdam, a marvellous combination of line, colour and lettering, he
had already severed his connection. Yet both designs are unmis-
takably De Stijl. Clearly what unites them is Style, not physical or
ideological adherence to a movement or group.

J.J.P.Oud Café Unie, Rotterdam, 1925 (destroyed)

Architecture becomes a kind of environmental graphic design
14
oO
oo
1 The international background

Styles in art and architecture do not develop in a vacuum. Certain

elements in De Stijl can undoubtedly be related to the Dutch back-

ground, but there are important parallels and precursors in art and
architecture elsewhere in Europe, and in America.
The pre-eminence of England in architecture and the applied arts
towards the end of the nineteenth century was short-lived but in-
fluential on the Continent. The writings of William Morris and other

E.W.Godwin Sideboard, 1867

Collection Victoria and Albert Museum. Crown Copyright
designers were widely read in Europe and the work of English de-
signers
was well known both from periodicals and from exhibitions.
The exterior of the white house which Edward Godwin
designed for Whistler in 1878 was plain and unassuming—white-
painted brick with windows and doors placed asymmetrically.
Godwin’s interiors and furniture, which show his early interest
in Japanese design, were even more striking in their simplicity and
clearness of construction. Godwin’s buffet and a chair, both of
which are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, seem
to anticipate Rietveld’s red-blue chair and buffet (see page 26).

E. W. Godwin Chair, about 1885

Collection Victoria and Albert Museum, Crown Copyright
 In England the influence of Morris meant that the well-designed
furniture produced at the end of the nineteenth century and the be-
ginning of the twentieth century was produced by hand and hence
could only be afforded by a rich and cultured élite. In Germany,
however, designers were beginning to design for the machine,
with the result that good design became more generally available.
Between 1896 and 1903 Hermann Muthesius was posted in
England as a supplementary trade attaché at the German Embassy
to study English architecture and design and to report on its de-
velopment—a kind of cultural spy. He published the results of his
stay in three volumes entitled Das Englische Haus (The English
House) which covered every aspect of English domestic architec-
ture. From Muthesius’ books and articles the De Stijl architects,
like most of their continental contemporaries, would have been
familiar with developments in English design.
In 1907, under Muthesius’ leadership, some of the more enter-
prising German manufacturers together with architects and
designers formed the Deutscher Werkbund to improve standards
of qualityin industrial design.
In 1905-6 Richard Riemerschmid had designed his first
machine-made furniture for the Deutsche Werkstatten, and in 1907
the Werkstatten commissioned designs for mass-produced low-
cost furniture from Bruno Paul and this was exhibited in 1910 as
the first unit furniture (7ypemobe/).
In Germany and Austria the firm of Thonet had been producing
bentwood furniture in their factories by mass-production tech-
niques since the middle of the nineteenth century. The beechwood
parts were steamed and bent mechanically in large numbers and
later assembled to make up the individual chairs. The famous café
chair, No. 14, was first made in 1859 and by 1910 had sold over
fifty million. The design is still in use today and what is more is still
made and sold.
Although curvilinear in form rather than angular, Thonet’s chairs
anticipate Rietveld’s furniture in that the pieces are fixed together
so that they remain visually separate and stand out clearly in space.
Although Rietveld’s furniture was never mass-produced it was de-
signed in such a way that this would be possible. The red-blue
armchair, for instance, is based on a module, and the parts are
standardized and absolutely simple. Rietveld’s designs are rather
18
Thonet Desk chair no. 9, designed 1855

like early prototypes for mass-produced furniture. They have been

regarded as such by later designers who have plundered them for
ideas.
In the early years of the twentieth century the Scottish architect,
Charles Rennie Mackintosh, was well known on the Continent al-
though hardly at all in England. Reproductions of his executed
works and projected designs were published in European art and
19
Charles Rennie Mackintosh Clock, c. 1917-19
Ebonized wood with ivory inlay. Collection University of Glasgow

design journals. Recently attempts have been made to locate

Mackintosh in the tradition of nineteenth-century architecture and
design rather than as a pioneer of the Modern Movement, but un-
deniably he was a precursor of much twentieth-century architec-
ture and interior design if not necessarily an active influence. By
the time of the First World War he had fallen into obscurity, al-
though one of his most interesting designs, the conversion of a
house in Northampton, was done in 1916-17.
In 1908 the Austrian architect Adolf Loos, Hoffmann’s exact
contemporary, wrote an essay entitled Ornament and Crime in
which decoration was equated with primitivism or decadence: ‘I
20
 ma = Glasgow School of Art 1896-9
Charles Rennie Mackintosh staircase
have Bvolved the following maxim, and pronounceit to the world :
the evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament
from useful objects.’ (The arrogance and dogmatism of this could
only have come out of the Vienna of Freud and Krafft-Ebing.) In
his Steiner house, Loos puts his theories into practice, no orna-
ment disfigures its plain surfaces and blank windows.
In the Carson, Pirie and Scott department store (Chicago), de-
signed by Louis Sullivan, the facade is built from horizontal bands
of windows. In earlier buildings like the Wainwright building in St
Louis and the Guaranty building in Buffalo, Sullivan had stressed
the vertical structural elements. Here the emphasis is transferred to
the horizontal, and to the window area rather than the structural
elements. The window bands are carried right round the corner of
the building—a solution that was later to be used frequently by
European architects like Erich Mendelsohn in the design of

Opposite
Louis Sullivan Carson, Pirie and Scott department store,
Chicago, Illinois, 1899-1904

Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer Fagus shoe-last factory,

Alfeld-an-der-Leine, 1911
NY
Frank Lloyd Wright Unity Temple, Chicago, 1906

department stores and other commercial buildings. Oud used

similar means in the rounded ends of terraces in his two estates at
Hook of Holland and Kiefhoek (pages 137 and 143). The horizontal
‘Chicago windows’ had been used earlier by architects like Burn-
ham and Root, but Sullivan’s combination of these with the
rounded corner, preserving the unity of a single facade as it curves
through the right angle of the street corner, represents a dramatic
and revolutionary step into the twentieth century.
The Chicago window with its combination of larger and smaller
panes of glass is slightly reminiscent of some of Mondrian and van
Doesburg’s paintings of 1921 (see page 29). The influence of the
painting of Mondrian and van Doesburg on the architecture of the
early nineteen-twenties has often been claimed. However, if there
was an influence from their work it was clearly more a matter of
24
Frank Lloyd Wright Robie house, Chicago, 1909

clarifying elements which were already present in the work of

architects like Sullivan.
The early buildings of Sullivan's pupil, Frank Lloyd Wright, were
the most important non-Dutch influences on the architects who
were first associated with De Stijl, Robert van t'Hoff, Jan Wils and
Oud. Wright's work and ideas were introduced to Holland through
an exhibition in 1910 and the two Wasmuth volumes (in German)
on Wright in 1910 and 1911. Berlage saw Wright's buildings when
he visited America in 1911 and lectured on Sullivan, Richardson
and particularly Wright on his return. A little later van t'Hoff went
to Chicago and met Wright. He came back to Holland in 1914 full

of enthusiasm for his work and his two villas at Huis ter Heide near
Utrecht were inspired by Wright's work. Wright's Robie house,
with its great horizontal emphasis and dramatically cantilevered
25
 st

Gerrit Rietveld Buffet, 1919

Collection Mr & Mrs Brian Housden

eaves, offers very clear visual parallels with the most advanced
three-dimensional works associated with De Stijl, like Rietveld’s
buffet, red-blue chair and Schroder house and Vantongerloo’s later
sculpture. Rietveld was asked to make Wrightian furniture for van
t'Hoff’s larger villa in 1918, but this was quite possibly after he had
26
Robert van t’ Hoff Villa at Huis ter Heide, near Utrecht, 1916

already made the buffet and the red-blue chair. Rietveld may well
have arrived at his solutions independently as a result of the care-
ful analysis of the process of making a piece of furniture, stripping
it down to the bare essentials, exposing the skeletal structure of
small pieces of wood that underlies even a conventional chair.
27
Musical instruments’ room, Imperial Katsura Palace, Kyoto, seventeenth century

There is a strong Japanese quality to Rietveld’s early furniture

(particularly the buffet). The balanced asymmetry and contempla-
tive silence of Mondrian’s later paintings are in extraordinary sym-
pathy with Japanese interiors. Van Doesburg had written articles
on Japanese and Asiatic art in the magazine Eenheid, 1912-13.
When Mondrian moved to Paris in 1911 he quickly found that
Cubism offered a solution to the problems he had been struggling
with in Holland. It enabled him first to clarify the function of line
and then later, more slowly, that of the plane in his work. Possibly
28
Piet Mondrian Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue 1921
Oil. Loan S.B. Slijper, Collection Haags Gemeentemuseum,
The Hague
29
he might have arrived at these without the help of Cubism, but it
would certainly have taken longer.
Very soon Mondrian had gone far beyond the static, intellectual
unpicking of the seams of reality of Cubism. In an autobio-
graphical essay written shortly before his death Mondrian re-
called: ‘Gradually | became aware that Cubism did not accept
the logical consequences of its own discoveries; it was not
developing abstraction towards the ultimate goal, the expression
of pure reality.’ Between 1912 and his return to Holland in 1914
his work is a gradual and very sensitive rendering down of visual
reality to the plane surface and the rectilinear juncture of horizontal
and vertical lines.
Oud frequently referred to the influence of Cubism on his own
work, onthe other De Stijl architects,
and onthe Modern Movement
in architecture in general. But there is very little evidence of the
influence of painting in modern architecture at all. All the
elements are there in the Chicago School, in Wright, in Loos.
Drawings for projected buildings by the Futurist architects An-
tonio Sant’Elia and Mario Chiattone were published in the De
Stijl] magazine with commentaries by van t’Hoff and Oud, and
the futurist painter Gino Severini contributed several articles.
Unlike the Cubists, the Futurists were interested in finding forms
to express the newness of twentieth-century experience. Some of
their techniques were borrowed from Cubism, but it was tech-
niques only. The angular
lines of forcein Futurist painting andsculp-
ture were derived from multiple exposure photography like the
‘chronophotographs’ of E.-J.Marey. The influence of this is most
obvious in Balla’s comic painting of ascampering dachshund with
its legs and tail depicted as fans of whirling lines. Later these
elements were assimilated into more abstract forms.
The dynamic diagonals of van Doesburg’s counter-compositions
seem related to these lines of force in Futurism ; a dramatic abstract
expression of movement. It is perhaps not too far-fetched to see a
parallel also in the angled planes of Rietveld’s red-blue chair, al-
though like other early works of De Stijl this is static and balanced,
not dynamic.

Piet Mondrian Composition in Oval 1913/14

Oil. Loan S.N. Slijper. Collection Haags Gemeentemuseum,
The Hague
30
32
 The excessively romantic, almost demonic worship of speed and
machinery of the Futurists becomes a sober and seemingly rational
analysis in the writings of van Doesburg, Mondrian and Oud.

We will sing of the nocturnal vibration of arsenals and workshops

beneath their violent electric moons... of adventurous steamers
scenting the horizon; of broad-chested locomotives prancing on
the rails, like huge steel horses bridled with long tubes; and of the
gliding flight of aeroplanes, the sound of their propellers like the
flapping of flags and the applause of an enthusiastic crowd.
(Marinetti: Futurist Manifesto)

The machine is, par exce//ence, a phenomenon of spiritual disci-

pline. Materialism as a way of life and art took handicraft as its dir-
ect psychological expression. The new spiritual artistic sensibility
of the twentieth century has not only felt the beauty of the machine,
but has also taken cognisance of its unlimited expressive possibi-
lities for the arts. (Van Doesburg)

Mondrian was a member of the Dutch Theosophical Society and

kept a picture of Madame Blavatsky in his studio. It is customary
today to think of theosophy as middle-brow, half-baked and rather
laughable. This is arrogant prejudice. A way of thinking which at-
tracted men as intelligent as Mondrian, Yeats, Kandinsky, Scriabin
and Stravinsky must have had something important to offer, par-
ticularly in the context of the opposition to late nineteenth, early
twentieth-century scientific positivism and materialism. From
theosophy possibly comes the similarity of some De Stijl ideas
(the universal as opposed to the individual) to Buddhism and other
Eastern religious teaching. Rietveld was interested in the writings
of the Bengali poet, Rabrindranath Tagore.

Antonio Sant’ Elia Design for a building, 1914.

This drawing by Sant’ Elia was reproduced in De Stij/, 1919 (Vol 11 No 10)

33
 In the last paragraph of his theoretical essay Concerning the
Spiritualin Art (published 1912) Kandinsky wrote:

We are fast approaching a time of reasoned and conscious com-

position, in which the painter will be proud to declare his work
constructional—this in contrast to the claim of the Impressionists
that they could explain nothing, that their art came by inspiration
We have before us an age of conscious creation, and this new spirit
in painting is going hand in hand with thought towards an epoch
of great spirituality.

Van Doesburg read Kandinsky’s book shortly after it appeared and

championed his work and ideas in the reviews and essays that he
contributed to various Dutch periodicals. There are several of van
Doesburg’s early paintings which show the influence of the
expressionist abstract paintings that Kandinsky was producing in
Munich up to 1914. Kandinsky’s work of this period was, on the
surface at least, rather different from the ‘reasoned and conscious
composition’ that he looked forward to in his book. His own work
did not finally become geometrical until the early ‘twenties.
Sooner than Kandinsky himself, van Doesburg came to reject the
intuitive, expressionist method of composition, but his belief in
‘the spiritual in art’ remained constant to the end of his life.

Kasimir Malevitch Suprematist Composition 1915

Oil. Malevitch’s suprematist works were possibly an influence on van Doesburg’s
diagonal counter-compositions. Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
34
eres
‘
See

et
.
; A
oO
—
2 The Dutch background 2

In Holland one is always aware of the line of the horizon. Against

ita tree, a man, a building stands out as a vertical which makes an
angle of ninety degrees with the horizon—the horizontal.
The Dutch landscape is not natural. It is almost entirely man-
made, reclaimed from the sea and dependant on a complex system
of rectangular dykes and polders. Holland isthe most densely pop-
ulated country in the world (900 people to the square mile).
Many of the larger towns, particularly in the western part of Hol-
land between Amsterdam, the Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht are
only a few minutes apart by train or car. In no other country is there
less discontinuity between the countryside and the town. The
Dutch countryside is as un-natural, as man-made as the town. In
Holland they say ‘God made the World, the Dutch made Holland’,
The straight line and the right angle are, with the plane surface,
the most important elements in De Stijl. (Van Doesburg originally
thought of calling the magazine ‘The Straight Line’.) They seem to
stand for man’s control of his environment. Nowhere is this order-
ing and discipline of nature more apparent than in Holland. It is, in
fact, the great achievement of the Dutch people who have re-
claimed so much of their country from the sea and made habitable
what was previously uninhabitable.
However, as H.L.C.Jaffé (the author of the standard work on De
Stijl) has stressed, it is necessary to avoid the suggestion that in
adopting the straight line and the plane surface the De Stijl artists
were indulging in a ‘camouflaged naturalism’: ‘The Dutch land-
scape has been built according to the same principles upon which
the work of De Stijl is founded’—the one does not depend upon
the other.
It would be a mistake to over-emphasize the importance of na-
tional and local factors in the development of De Stijl. No doubt
the flatness and un-naturalness of the Dutch landscape contri-
buted to the emphasis on the horizontal and vertical and the plane
surface in the work of De Stijl, but the tendency towards rectili-
nearity and geometric form was common to all the countries which
contributed to the modern movement in art and architecture during
the first decades of the century.
36
 In the past in Dutch town architecture it has been the vertical
which has most often been stressed. In De Stijl architecture the
horizontal and vertical are balanced, or if one element predomin-
ates it is the horizontal—but again this is common to the interna-
tional development of architecture at this time.

Some of the ideas inherent in De Stijl may derive from the Dutch
Jewish philosopher Spinoza (1632-77) ; Spinoza believed that in-
dividual souls and separate objects were not things, but aspects of
the Divine Being (God). He rejected the personal immortality of
Christianity. The only immortality possible was in becoming more
and more one with God.
Spinoza wrote ‘all determination is negation’—things are defined
by their boundaries, that is, where they change into something else.
(There is a constant insistence in the writings of the De Stijl artists
on relations rather than things.)
Spinoza’s Ethics is laid out like Euclid’s Geometry with defini-
tions, axioms and theorems. The last two books are entitled: Of
Human or The Strength of the Emotions
Bondage, and Of the
Power of the Understanding, or of Human Freedom.
Van Doesburg wrote: ‘Every emotion, be it grief or joy, implies a
rupture of harmony, of equilibrium between the subject (man) and
the object (universe).’
According to Spinozapassions distract us and obscure our
intellectual vision of the whole... . ‘Spiritual unhealthiness and
misfortunes can generally be traced to excessive love of
something which is subject to many variations.’ On the other

hand spiritual health lies in ‘love towards a thing immutable and

eternal’.
Mondrian wrote :’That which is immutable is above all misery and
happiness: it is balance. By the immutable within us we are identi-
fied with all existence ;the mutable destroys our balance, limits us
and separates us from all that is other than ourselves.”
Jaffé has drawn attention to the influence of the Dutch mystical
thinker Dr Schoenmaekers. Both Mondrian and van der Leck lived
was
at Laren near Amsterdam in 1916 (when the idea of De Stijl
being discussed). Schoenmae kers lived in Laren and apparently

Mondrian and he saw each other frequently and had long discus-
The
sions. Schoenmaekers published two books about this time:
37
New Image of the World in 1915, and Principles of Plastic
Mathematics in 1916.
The terminology in Mondrian’s own writings seems to owe a
lot to Schoenmaekers, but Jaffé’s claim that Schoenmaekers’
philosophy was one of the most important constituents in De Stijl
is hardly substantiated. Schoenmakers’ ideas seem to have been
somewhat vague and his references, for instance, to line (horizon-
tal = female, vertical = male, etc) and primary colours (blue reced-
ing, yellow advancing, red ‘hovering’), although paralleled in
Mondrian’s writings, were common in aesthetic theory of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Undoubtedly some of Schoenmaekers’ statements (quoted by
Jaffé) are similartothose of Mondrian and even van Doesburg:
‘We want to penetrate nature in such a way that the inner
construction of reality is revealed to us.’ (Schoenmaekers).
Schoenmaekers puts great stress on ‘relations’ rather than things
as do the De Stijl artists. But again, as with line and colour, this
kind of thinking was more or less common property at the time.
Schoenmaekers defined style : ‘Style in art is : the general in spite
of the particular. By style, art is integrated in general, cultural life.’
Jaffé suggests that van Doesburg was influenced by Schoen-
maekers in naming the magazine De Stij/ (rather than The Straight
Line). But van Doesburg does not appear to have been much in-
fluenced by Schoenmaekers at all. His ideas are mainly derived
from nineteenth-century German philosophy and aesthetics in
which he was well read. The architectural historian Reyner Ban-
ham’s suggestion that van Doesburg’s adoption of the name De
Stijl was ‘Berlagian’ seems more likely. Berlage’s definition of
Style: ‘Unity in Plurality’ is not unlike Schoenmaekers’ later defi-
nition.
Although there are almost as many Catholics in Holland as Pro-
testants (41% compared to 50%), the Catholics are concentrated
in the province of Limburg and North Brabant in the south-east. In
the western part of Holland, where the De Stijl artists were
centred, traditional Dutch Calvinism is predominant. Allthe Dutch —
De Stijl artists came from strict Calvinist families.
on pages 40 and 41 J.J.P.Oud Kiefhoek housing estate, Rotterdam, 1925-9;
aerial view

J.J.P.Qud Spangen housing estate, Rotterdam, 1918-19 (destroyed)

38
&e

SEEGERS
NEOR
KAA

Pe
ONESIES
SEN
eT
SA
J.J.P.Qud Tusschendijken housing estate, Rotterdam, 1920 (destroyed)
42
 The Calvinists interpreted the first commandment literally : “Thou
shalt not make unto thee any graven image.’ De Stijl translated the
religious proscription against the graven image into an aesthetic
one. Van Doesburg wrote in De Stij/ in 1918:

It is wrong to identify the essence of thought with contemplation,

just as it is wrong with regard to contemplation, to identify it with
sensual representation of nature. The latter is a conception of clas-
sical and Roman Catholic origin, against which Protestantism has
gone to battle (iconoclasm).

Jaffé has pointed out that in Dutch there is only a single word
schoon for both ‘clean’ and ‘beautiful’.
The Dutch character is full of contradictions. Traditionally
Calvinist and puritanical there is also a strangely tolerant side to
the Dutch which is perhaps the result of the Spanish influence—
the red light districts and homosexual social clubs of Amsterdam
are the most extreme examples.
Although Holland is so densely populated and urban the Dutch
still remain in some ways a peasant people. Family ties are strong.
Yet the Dutch do not shut themselves away within the family
circle. There always remains a certain
openness. The Dutch
have always liked large windows and in the cities they do
not draw the curtains in the evenings. The neat front-rooms
and potted plants inside the window are on view. The Dutch
love light. The typical home is fitted with strip, wall and centre
lights.
Holland was relatively late in industrializing, but towards the end
of the nineteenth century this took place rapidly. There was a
steadily increasing movement of population from the land to the
towns, from agricultural employment to industrial. Particularly im-
portant was the rapid expansion of the port of Rotterdam and an
influx of workers to man the docks and allied industries. The land
which has been reclaimed from the sea has always been owned by
the state and houses built on this land are leasehold.
Holland was the first country to introduce, in 1901, systematic
legislation for the national organization of urban development. This
meant that every ten years a revised general plan had to be drawn
up for all towns with over 10,000 inhabitants. In the first decades
of the twentieth century Holland was in the forefront in housing
43
policy. One of the earliest schemes was Berlage’s plan for middle-
class housing in Amsterdam South. Oud’s first blocks in Rotter-
dam, the Spangen and Tusschendijken estates (destroyed in the
Second World War) were among the earliest large-scale schemes
for low-cost working-class housing.
In one area of Rotterdam South, workers who had recently ar-
rived from the country were housed in village-like communities of
single storey terrace houses in an attempt to recreate the intimacy
of rural life within an urban environment. The inspiration was prob-
ably English garden city planning, but the Rotterdam development
seems better integrated into the town, less self-consciously cot-
tagey. The most successful (and most urban) of these communities
was Oud’s Kiefhoek estate.
Dutch architecture has usually been on a more or less domestic
scale. The marshy ground of Holland has, in the past, made large
monumental buildings of stone impractical. Brick has been the tra-
ditional Dutch building material (brick, of course, was really the
first standardized building material). In the seventeenth century
many of the towns were rebuilt in the Dutch domestic style, a
model of anonymous, systematic architecture which remains hu-
man and intimate. Only in the nineteenth century were there a few
attempts to create a monumental style. In many ways the De Stijl
reaction against this was a return to the Dutch tradition. Although
in the early years of De Stijl, Oud and van Doesburg called for a
monumental (rather than a decorative) architecture, the later De
Stijl architecture, like the Schroder house or Oud’s estates of the
‘twenties, is anti-monumental.
Art Nouveau architecture and design was restrained and geo-
metric in Holland, in contrast to the rich and florid Art Nouveau of
Belgium. Only in the paintings and graphic work of the Dutch-
Indonesian artist Jan Toorop, and to lesser extent that of Johan
Thorn Prikker, are the wilder elements of Art Nouveau apparent in
their rhythmical linear extravagance. There are slight Art Nouveau
elements in Mondrian’s work before 1911.
Nor did the Gothic revival take very extreme form in Dutch archi-
tecture. M.P.J.Cuypers’ large, rather busy, brick public buildings in
Amsterdam, like the Rijkmuseum and the Central Station, are typi-
cal of the Dutch architecture of the second half of the nineteenth
century.
44
 SS

J.J.P.Oud Kiefhoek housing estate, Rotterdam, 1925-9

to
Berlage, who began as an eclectic, stripped his style down
of his
: simplified, sober Gothic and Renaissance forms. The design
best known building, the Stock Exchange in Amsterdam, went
nce styles
through several versions from late Gothic and Renaissa
45
Jan Toorop Three Brides 1893
Mixed media Collection Rijksmuseum Krdoller-Miuller, Otterlo

H.P.Berlage Holland House, 1—4 Bury St, London E.C.3, 1914

(now slightly altered) Photo courtesy Brian Houden

to an austere, bare Romanesque. The facades became flat and two-

dimensional. The wall is reduced to a plane surface and the dense
surface characteristics of its material—brick—are emphasized.
Berlage’s most advanced building is not in Holland, but an office
block in London designed in 1914. The use of metal windows and
the marked vertical and horizontal character of the fenestration is
particularly interesting in the context of the development of De
Stijl architecture a few years later. However, Berlage’s influence
on the next generation of Dutch architects was as much through
his extensive writings as through his buildings.
46
 a plane. No de-
Berlage insisted on the importance of the wall as
wall must be shown
coration must disguise it: ‘before all else, the
in all its sleek beauty. Anythi ng fixed on it must be shunned
nude
its true value
as an embarrassment. Thus walling would receive
as plane would remain’ .
again in the sense that its nature
achieve ‘the creation of space, not the
Architecture should
g of facades’ . Berlage describe d how this was to be done:
sketchin
whereby a
‘A spatial envelope is established by means of walls,
ed, accordi ng to the complex-
space, a series of spaces is manifest
ity of the walling.”
Berlage emphasized the importance of geometry and mathe-

matics in the creation of form in the visual arts, as in music. He ad-

would
vocated the use of proportional systems in design which
repose and balance and hence Style, in contrast
create an effect of
Berlage
to the restless quality of nineteenth-century eclecticism.
in-
believed that architecture should absorb painting and sculpture
to akind of Gesamtkunstwerk (Total Work of Art) and that interest

in the applied arts would grow at the expense of the fine arts.
Like Morris, Berlage was a socialist, but a free-thinking rational-
ist, not a Christian socialist. It is ironic that just as Morris’s expen-
sive handwork was bought only by the wealthy, so Berlage’s best
known work is the Amsterdam Stock Exchange building.
Van der Leck was a life-long socialist and the writings of most of
the artists and architects associated with De Stijl were inspired by
left-wing ideals. In contrast to Berlage’s almost positivist view-
point they laid stress on the importance of spiritual values. Van
Doesburg wrote in De Stij/ in 1923:

The artist is neither a proletarian nor a bourgeois and what he

creates belongs neither to the proletariat nor to the bourgeoisie.
It belongs to everyone. Art is a spiritual activity in man, with the
aim to deliver him from the chaos of life, from tragedy. Art is free in
the application of its means, but bound by its own laws and by
nothing but its laws.

P.J.Klaarhamer Buffet, 1915

Made for Klaarhamer by Rietveld
48
P.J.Klaarhamer Chair, 1915
Made for Klaarhamer by Rietveld

Although he was not directly associated with De Stijl the career of

the Utrecht architect and designer, P.J.Klaarhamer, is important in
relation to De Stijl. Van der Leck collaborated with Klaarhamer on
illustrations to the Song of Songs as early as 1905, and again in
1918 in designs for the stands for Messrs Bruynzeel at the Utrecht
50
Gerrit Rietveld Chair, 1908

Fair. Between 1911 and 1915 Rietveld took an evening course in

architecture under Klaarhamer and through him he met van der
Leck. In 1915 while working for Klaarhamer, Rietveld built several
pieces of furniture designed by Klaarhamer in the simplified
tradition of the Dutch Arts and Crafts style.
51
SZS

IEE

IE. SBR ES
SER
SES aS
BENEES
SEN ONE SA
S
< ~~
8S SBS
OO

RENAN BEE

ST STE

Van der Mey Scheepvaartshuis, Amsterdam, 1911-15

De Klerk and Kramer worked on the detailing and interior. Photograph, the author

52
 With Frank Lloyd Wright, Berlage was the most important in-
fluence on Dutch architecture during the 1910s and his influence
persisted, in the work of the Amsterdam School, until the early
‘twenties. The exuberant forms of many of the buildings of the
Amsterdam School might perhaps be considered as a late flower-
ing of Art Nouveau in Dutch architecture, although the school is
often linked with the so-called Expressionist style in German archi-
tecture of this period (early Mendelsohn, Poelzig, etc) and in cer-
tain ways anticipates the decorative style of the ‘twenties and
‘thirties.

seta tt etpetmereerls etstntt

Sr)

Michel de Klerk Zaanstraat housing estate, 1917—21

Photograph, the author

53
 ids ane
ee pean
oh! he?

The earliest building in the Amsterdam Style is the Scheepvaar-

thuis (Shipping House), a concrete-framed structure concealed
beneath jutting sculpture and decorative brickwork. The most
imaginative work of the Amsterdam School is Michel de Klerk’s
housing estate along the Zaanstraat, where soft brick and tile-hung
forms contrasted with sharp, angular windows hint at Zeppelins
and rockets.
54
J.A.Brinkman and L.C. van der Viugt Van Nelle faciory,
Van Nelleweg, Rotterdam, 1928. Photograph, Brian Housden
55
 The De Stijl artists and architects, particularly van Doesburg and
Oud, regarded the Amsterdam School as the enemy on the door-
step. It was the butt of continual attacks from them in the De Stj/
magazine and elsewhere. (They usually singled out the most ex-
treme examples, like a house designed in the shape of a tram!) Yet
at its best, in the work of architects like Piet Kramer and de Klerk,
the Amsterdam Style was arguably just as valid and modern as the
Rotterdam Style exemplified by Oud’s cool, anonymous white
housing estates of the ‘twenties or the van Nelle factory (outside
Rotterdam).
The German architect Erich Mendelsohn, invited by the Amster-
dam School to visit Holland, wrote back to his wife:

Oud is functional so as to talk with Gropius. Amsterdam is dyna-

mic... The first sets ratio before everything: perception through
analysis. The second sets perception through vision. Analytical
Rotterdam refuses vision; visionary Amsterdam does not under-
stand cold objectivity ...If Amsterdam goes a step further to-
wards reason and Rotterdam’s blood does not freeze, then they
may unite. Otherwise Rotterdam will pursue the way of mere con-
struction with deathly chill in its veins and Amsterdam will be de-
stroyed by the fire of its own dynamism.

What Mendelsohn foresaw more or less came about. The Rotter-

dam School was absorbed into the International Style and de-
based, the Amsterdam School barely survived de Klerk’s death in
1923. What generally emerged in Dutch architecture in the ‘twen-
ties and ‘thirties was a combination of formal elements from early
De Stijl architecture with a use of traditional Dutch brickwork de-
rived from the Amsterdam School, as in the work of W.M.Dudok
and J.F.Staal. Dudok’s Hilversum town hall became widely influ-
ential in Europe between the wars and was much imitated.

56
3 De Stijl: development and ideals

The examples and illustrations in the last two chapters are given as
visual parallels and precursors rather than as necessarily direct in-
fluences. Art historians are fond of the ‘billiard ball’ theory of in-
fluence and transference of ideas. A does this, B gets to hear about
it or sees the work and then does this, C sees it and does this, and
so on. This is a naive view of the history of ideas.
The history of science, for instance, shows many examples of
two scientists, who have no contact, coming up with the same or
similar theories at approximately the same time, often only dis-
covering the ideas of the other at some later date. This happens too
in the arts; and particularly in the visual arts. When one man learns
of what another has been working on in a similar direction this may
confirm him in the way he is going, not influence him directly.
This seems to have been the case with the inter-relation between
the painters associated with De Stijl and between these painters
and architects and designers. This is not to deny that there was pro-
bably some direct influence from one artist or architect to another
at various points in the development of De Stijl.
One of the most important factors in the development of De
Stijl was the neutrality of Holland during the First World War.
Looking back in 1929 van Doesburg wrote in a Swiss periodical :

We all lived in the spirit of a genesis. Though there was no war in

our neutral Netherlands, yet the war outside caused commotion
and a spiritual tension ; the soil was nowhere as propitious for the
gathering of renewing forces. The war, raging at our borders, drove
home many artists who had been working abroad.

Van t’Hoff who had been working for two years in architectural
offices in America (including Wright's) returned to Holland. Van
der Leck hurried home from a trip to Morocco. Mondrian, who had
come from Paris to visit his father who was ill, was forced to re-
main in Holland for the duration of the war. Vantongerloo came to
the Hague as a refugee from Belgium.
Inthe last (memorial) number
of De Sti//in 1932 Mondrian wrote :

It was a sombre and painful time, the time of the Great War, in Hol-
land as well. Due to the international understanding between
57
Piet Mondrian Composition in Grey, Red, Yellow and Blue 1920
Oil. Collection Tate Gallery, London

Furniture by Gerrit Rietveld. At back, /eft, buffet, 1919; right, Berlin chair,
1923. Middle, left to right: military chair with arms, 1923; military stool,
1923; child’s toy wheel-barrow, 1920; red-blue armchair, 191 7-18. Front,
left, chair with arms, 1919; right, end table, 1923
Collection Mr and Mrs Brian Housden
peoples, as much as to our human and artistic sensibility, the de-
pression and anguish of war extended inevitably there where no
fighting occurred. In spite of everything, in Holland there still ex-
isted the possibility of being preoccupied with purely ethical ques-
tions. Thus art continued there, developed there and what is
particularly remarkable, is that it was only possible for it to continue
in the same way as before the war; that is to say moving
towards an abstract expression.

Only in neutral Switzerland (Dadaism) and revolutionary Russia

(Suprematism and Constructivism) was there a similar co-opera-
tive development at this time. These three movements: De Stijl,
Constructivism and Dadaism, were later to come together and
interact during the early ‘twenties in a way which determined the
subsequent development of twentieth-century art, architecture
and design.
As well as bringing together the artists and giving them time
while the rest of Europe was at war, the neutrality of Holland
helped to give Dutch architects the initiative in combining and de-
veloping the new ideas in architecture that had come out of Europe
and America in the first decade of the twentieth century. As a result
Holland led Europe for a short period in the early ‘twenties.
In 1924, in the French architectural magazine, L ‘Architecture
Vivante, the editor Jean Badovici wrote: ;

Today, Holland seems to be the country richest in architectural ac-

tivity, the one which must be named as exercising the predominant
influence. One cannot but be astonished, when one sees this coun-
try, where individualists are so conspicuous and often so opposed,
give birth to an art of so beautiful a unity. The most diverse indivi-
dualists there have grouped themselves together and co-ordinated
their efforts, to work in an harmonious collaboration towards the
development and beauty of the cities.

Yet within a few years Germany was to make good the time lag of
the war and take the lead in the late ‘twenties.

Theo van Doesburg was born in Utrecht in 1883. (Rietveld and van
der Leck also came from Utrecht.) His real name was Christiaan
Emil Marie Kupper and he adopted the name of van Doesburg early
on in his career as an artist. Later he was to invent two more pseu-
donyms under which to publish his Dadaist poems and essays
in De Stijl and elsewhere: a Dutch alter ego, |I.K.Bonset, and an
Italian, Aldo Camini.
60
 . fy

aol
oe
Design used for the cover of the early issues of De Stij/, based on the
painting by Vilmos Huszar (see page 10)

The Kupper family seems to have been fairly well off and van
Doesburg had some private means with which he was later able
to finance the printing and publishing of the De Stij/ magazine.
Van Doesburg began to study painting in 1899 when he was six-
teen. In 1908, at the age of twenty-five, he held his first exhibition
at the Hague. From 1912 he contributed art criticism and essays to
various Dutch periodicals and magazines, in particular Eenheid, a
recently founded progressive review.
At the outbreak of war, van Doesburg was conscripted and sta-
tioned with the Dutch Frontier Guard on the Belgian border. It was
during this period of military service that he seems to have con-
ceived of the idea of a group or association of artists and architects
61
ABONNEMENT
BIJ VOORUITBETA-
Qi 6e@ Gs
| @
B ADRES
DACTIE:
VAW RE-
KORT
LING BINNRERLAND GALGEWATER 3
4.50 BUITENLAND > Ge ea’ aaa LEIDEN. ADMI-
5.50 PER JAAR- NISTRATIE: X.
GANG. voor AN- MAANDBLAD VOOR DE BEELDENDE HARMS TIEPEN,
HYPOLITUSBUURT
NONCES WENDE VAKKEN. REDACTIE THEO VAN DOES- 37 DELFT, INTERC.
DEN UITGEVER. BURG. UITGAVE X. HARMS TIEPEN. TEL. 729 EN 690.
a
le JAARGANG. APRIL NEGENTIENHONDERDACHTTIEN. NUMMER 6.

Logotype used in early issues of De Stijl

Composition Vilmos Huszar
From De Stijl, 1918 (Vol 1 no. 6)
62
and a periodical in which they could express their views. Here too
he met the poet and essayist Antony Kok, who was to be one of the
founder members of De Stij/. Kok seems to have further stimulated
van Doesburg’s interest in literature (during the ‘twenties he wrote
many poems and published a novel), although apparently van
Doesburg had already written poems under the influence of the
Italian Futurist, Marinetti, in 1913.
Van Doesburg had contacted Oud and Mondrian in 1915, and
when he was demobbed in 1916 he settled in Leiden where Oud
was also living at the time. Van Doesburg discussed the idea of a
magazine and a group with Oud and the Hungarian painter and de-
signer Huszar, who lived nearby at Voorburg. Early in 1917 van
Doesburg visited Mondrian and van der Leck who were both living
at Laren, near Amsterdam, and tried to enlist their support—van
Doesburg had for some time been an admirer of Mondrian’s work.
Both Mondrian and van der Leck seem to have been initially a bit
wary of van Doesburg’s idea of a group containing architects as
well. Jaffé quotes part of a letter from Mondrian to van Doesburg
written in February 1917: ‘You should remember that my things
are still intended to be painting, that is to say, they are plastic
representation, in and by themselves, not part of a building.
Furthermore, they have been made in a small room.’ Van der Leck
feared that the architects would dominate the painters and, ap-
parently under the impression that this was happening, dis-
associated himself from De Stijl a year later. However, van der
Leck was prepared to collaborate with architects providing it was
an equal partnership, and in the same year that he left De Stijl
(1918) worked with the architect Klaarhamer on the interior
design for a stand at the Utrecht Fair.
However, as van Doesburg was later to point out in many essays,
he believed that the different visual arts, painting, sculpture, archi-
tecture must, at the beginning at least, be clearly separated so that
they could individually purify their means of expression.
In his magazine articles (1912-14) van Doesburg had laid the
theoretical foundations of what was to become De Stijl, insisting
on the need for the straight line and the rectangular principle, and
calling for a renewal of spiritual values in art. Between 1914 and
1916 he was able to paint little himself while in the army, but seems
to have had time enough to develop his ideas.
63
Piet Mondrian Composition in Black and White 1917
Oil. Collection Rijksmuseum Kroller-Miuller, Otterlo

After van Doesburg left the army tn mid-1916 and began to come
into closer contact with Mondrian it is difficult to determine their
exact relationship, as for the years 1916 to 1920 the documenta-
tion and chronology of the work of both painters is far from satis-
factory. It seems that by 1917 they had arrived at approximately
the same point; Mondrian in practice, van Doesburg in ideas. Van
Doesburg encouraged Mondrian to put his own ideas into words
and once out of the army found himself able to develop his own
ideas in terms of actual paintings.
64
 ‘

CO

REN
Room

Oe
CK

5
SOW,
<

ee

P iet Mondrian Se/f-portra it 1918

(@) Loan S .B. SI ijper. Collect ion Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague
65
Theo van Doesburg 7he Cow 1917
Oil. Collection Museum of Modern Art, New York

Mondrian’s major contribution to the initial development of De

Stijl was the series of ‘plus and minus’ paintings from 1914 to
1917. These are sometimes knownalsoas ‘pier and ocean’ paintings
because they were inspired by the sea and pier at Scheveningen,
near the Hague (‘Observing sea, sky and stars, | sought to indicate
their plastic function through a multiplicity of crossing verticals and
horizontals’).
In his book Principles of Neo-Plasticism published at the Bau-
haus in 1925, but based on essays written around 1917, van
Doesburg sees the expressive means of all the arts as the relation-
ships between positive and negative elements. In music, sounds
(positive) and silence (negative) ; in painting, colour (positive)
and non-colour—black, white or grey—(negative) ; in architec-
ture, plane and mass (positive) and space (negative) ; in sculpture,
volume (positive) and space (negative).
In The Cow (1917) van Doesburg made his most important early
contribution to the stylistic development of De Stijl, the introduc-
tion of a strong asymmetricality. Mondrian, whose use of
66
Bart van der Leck Geometrical Composition 1917
Oil. Collection Rijksmuseum Krdller-Miuller, Otterlo

asymmetricality had been confined to small areas of a more or less

all-over surface coverage (in the ‘plus and minus’ paintings) was
to adopt this strong asymmetricality in his own work, particularly
from 1921.

Although Mondrian had avoided the use of green in his earlier

paintings and had used primary colour much reduced with white to
pale tints for some time, the introduction of pure primary colour
used in full saturation was one of van der Leck’s three important
67
Bart van der Leck Composition 1919
Oil. Collection Kréller-Miller, Otterlo

Bart van der Leck Beggars 1914

Tempera. Loan Mrs S.S. van der Meulen. Collection Haags
Gemeentemuseum, The Hague

contributions to De Stijl. In the letter from Mondrian to van Does-

burg, already quoted, Mondrian writes (February 1917): ‘I use
subdued colours for the time being, adapting myself to the present
surroundings and to the outer world; this does not mean that |
should not prefer a purer colouring. Otherwise you might think that
| contradict myself in my work.’ Mondrian doesn’t seem to have
used primary colour in full saturation until 1921.
68
 SOS

69
Piet Mondrian Composition in Blue A 1917
Oil. Collection Rijksmuseum Krdller-Miller, Otterlo

Theo van Doesburg Rhythm ofa Russian Dance 1918

Oil. Collection Musuem of Modern Art, New York

The second important contribution of van der Leck to De Stijl

was the use of discretely separated elements in his painting, neither
crossing nor intersecting. Thus his Composition (see page 67)
in the Kroller- Muller museum is a carefully ordered composition of -
thin rectangles of primary colour of uniform width but differing
length. It looks rather like the plan of the carefully-sawn wooden
members of a piece of Rietveld furniture—the red-blue chair for in-
stance—laid out ready for assembly. Although entirely abstract it is
quite likely that this painting was originally derived from an
70
 Oe
—

Be

BID

a
y SOG
Piet Mondrian Composition with Coloured Planes No. 3, 1917
Collection Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague

analysis of a cow, like van Doesburg’s painting. This is clearer in

the second version of this Composition that van der Leck painted.
Van der Leck’s third important contribution was the insistence
on the absolute flatness of his planes of colour, as Mondrian ac-
knowledged in the final (van Doesburg memorial!) issue of De Sti//
in 1932: ‘... van der Leck, who, though still figurative, painted
in compact planes of pure colour. My more or less Cubist tech-
nique—in consequence still more or less picturesque—underwent
the influence of his exact technique.’
Although van Doesburg usually worked with primary colours he
often used green throughout his career (in the Aubette decorations
in 1927 for instance). One of his best paintings Composition 17 of
1919 (see illustration page 111) is predominantly green.
72
Piet Mondrian Composition, Checkerboard, Bright Colours 1919
Oil. Collection Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague

In 1918, in Rhythm of aRussian Dance (see page 71) van Does-

burg uses tinted colours in thin rectangles of colour separated from
one another in a way slightly similartovan der Leck’s Composition
of 1917, but composed so that a pulsating optical rhythm is created
rather than the calculated balance of van der Leck’s work.
Whereas van der Leck’s Composition is flat and planar, Mon-
drian’s Composition in Blue A (see page 70) creates a remark-
able sense of simulated space, close to the definition and explora-
tion of real space in Rietveld’s chair, although not so carefully
worked out in these terms as his paintings of the late ‘thirties (see
page 13). This composition contains the seeds of virtually all Mon-
drian’s later works, including his last ‘boogie-woogie’ paintings
done shortly before his death in New York.
73
 In 1919 both van Doesburg and Mondrian began to divide
their canvases into small squares which were then used as the
modules for asymmetric compositions. (Van Doesburg’s tiled floor
for the interior of Oud’s sanatorium ‘De Vonk’ at Noordwijkerhout
was based on this system.) As Alred H.Barr has pointed out in his
pamphlet on De Stijl, this is anticipated by traditional Dutch tiling
(or one might add, Dutch decorative brickwork) which could have
been a direct influence on De Stijl painting. In 1920 Mondrian
adopted a rather freer style of arranging flat rectangles of subdued
primary colour and greys, whereas van Doesburg continued with
his modular compositions until his introduction of the diagonal
around 1924.

J.J.P.Qud and Theo van Doesburg ‘De Vonk’,

Noorwijkerhout, 1917-18
Van Doesburg collaborated with Oud on the interior and designed the
geometrically patterned floor
Theo van Doesburg Composition IX 1917
Oil. Collection Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague
75
 BER REELT TET EES’ ae
SOURCE EE TAS Aa aS
OCR ERE ER that w@
PRERGEREV
ERTL GSE
ee : _ ( Rati Geb tbatisie :
OR
+=—eert—s~s—s—e—~—,rCCi“ i
RUS
SORT
eat eas k ae 3

Seeres
@e92338
8930%%
28539%

Vilmos Huszar Composition 1918

Lithograph. Collection Rijksmuseum Kroller-Miuller, Otterlo
76
a EESESEGE
Re SEGL
:
=
ho

~
‘ad
” ——-
# i

Gerrit Rietveld Child’s chair, 1919

From De Stij/ 1919
77
 iia
—

an eerey

Jan Wils Hotel De Dubbele Sleutel, Woerden, 1919

Drawing from De Stij/ 1919

Robert van t’Hoff Villa at Huis ter Heide, near Utrecht

Drawings from De Sti// 1919

In 1916 Robert van t’Hoff had built two villas at Huis ter Heide
near Utrecht. The larger and more important house is quite ob-
viously directly inspired by Wright's work and by one building by
Wright in particular, the Unity Chapel in Chicago. Although very
obviously designed under the influence of Wright, van t’Hoff's villa,
one of the first to have been built by the concrete post and slab
technique, translates Wright into a distinctly European idiom. The
glazed corner of the window next to the porch for instance is closer
to Gropius’ Fagus factory (see page 22) than to Wright and the
whole exterior is less mannered than Wright, its outlines more pre-
cise.
Jan Wils restaurant
‘De Dubbele Sleutel’ of three years laterisalso —
extremely influenced by Wright in the use of brick, steps, roofs and
cornering. Wils’ Papaverhof estate of the following year (1920) has
moved several steps onwards towards the European modern style,
although one or two Wrightian elements are retained.
78
 Ti
| si
PPL ma sean ae ee a, Ie Re en, Can RR |

pan amin wenn one ne ae wenn nnn nnn wenn nn ee on =p

sagaae
ele
Petals

HHH
 Oud’s designs for a row of houses above the beach at Scheve-
ningen (1917) were never executed. Like van t’Hoff’s villa they are
still symmetrical, although stark and stripped down. Oud himself
described them as inspired by Cubism, but there is really nothing
Cubist about them. The design is plain, yet ingenious, based on a
system of interlocking cubic volumes that seems derived from
purely architectural thinking, not by way of painting.
If there seems a slight resemblance between Oud’s esplanade
houses and the paintings of van Doesburg, Mondrian or van der
Leck of the same period (other than a simplification of means), this
is probably because the scheme exists only in careful drawings and
a pristine white model with ‘blind’ white windows and doors.
Oud’s presentation techniques may have owed something to the

J.J.P.Qud Model for apartment houses on an esplanade above a beach at

Scheveningen, 1917 (not executed)
J.J.P.Oud Design for apartment houses on an esplanade above a beach at
Scheveningen, 1917 (not executed)

Ups Toe
Georges Vantongerloo Relation of Volumes 1919
Courtesy Marlborough Gallery, London
J.J.P.Oud Model for factory with office at Purmerend,
1919 (not executed)
painting of De Stijl or the sculpture of Vantongerloo, but not his
architectural ideas. ;
The visual parallel between Oud’s design for a factory at Pur-
merend (1919)—also not built and extant only in careful drawings
and a model—and Vantongerloo’s sculptures is much closer,
althoughthis is only true of the central_part of the design where ver-
tical and horizontal elements cross and intersect in a kind of nuc-
lear structure. But like most of Oud’s work it is essentially a surface
composition, rather than a space composition, a manipulation of a
facade. The other parts of the design are less interesting, more
obviously Wrightian, except for the interpenetration of different
volumes as represented by the intersection of roof levels. Again
the fact that the design exists only in drawings and models tends to
exaggerate its sculptural qualities.
Some of Vantongerloo’s earliest sculptural constructions, made
when he was living at the Hague in 1917, are based on the sphere
rather than the cube and even when his work looks purely cubic,
the definition of a spherical volume is often hinted at.

The first issue of De Stij/ is dated October 1917 but the First
Manifesto of De Stijl was not published in the magazine until
November 1918: this was signed by van Doesburg, van t’Hoff,
Huszar, Kok, Mondrian, Vantongerloo and Wils and printed in
Dutch, German, English and French. Van der Leck had already left
by this time and Oud, who was appointed City Architect of Rotter-
dam in 1918, seems not to have signed out of professional caution.
The manifesto was obviously intended to make sympathizers
abroad aware of what was happening in Holland and also to ex-
tend the movement onto an international basis. In an article pub-
lished in a Swiss magazine in 1929 van Doesburg wrote: ‘As the
World War was coming to an end, we all came to feel the need of
securing an interest in our efforts beyond the narrow boundaries of
Holland.’ Mondrian returned to Paris and van Doesburg began to
travel around Europe making contacts with artists and particularly
architects abroad. After the War many of the artists and architects
(mainly Dutch) who had earlier been associated with De Stijl sev-
ered their connection, and to replace them van Doesburg invited
some of those whom he had made contact with abroad to join the
movement, like the Russian Constructivist El Lissitzky, the German
83
 VIERDE JAARGANG 1921

LEIDEN ANTWERPEN PARIJS ROME MAANDBLAD

INTERNATIONAAL
WETEN-
KUNST
NIEUWE
VOOR
REDACTIE
KULTUUR
EN
SCHAP
DOESBURG
VAN
THEO

4 Wer

Cover, De Stij/ 1921

ex-Dadaist maker of abstract films, Hans Richter, the Austrian de-

signer Frederik Kiesler and the ex- Bauhaus student Werner Graeff.
The only important new Dutch member was the young architect
and town planner Cornelis van Eesteren. Other new members
were the Dutch painter Cesar Domela and the German painter
Friedel Vordemberge-Gildewart.
The change towards a more international outlook is symbolized
by the changes in format and layout of the magazine in 1921. The
format is changed from a small pocket-shape to a wide ‘landscape’
shape with a double column of print. The layout and typography
become purer and simplified, less Dutch in origin, in line with the
internationalism of the New Typography.
The origins of the New Typography are diverse. It appears as a
fully formed style in Russia, Holland and Germany in the early
‘twenties. In an essay on the book published in 1927, Lissitzky
84
leurs pieds du coin de |'eil, ils sont bien obligés de
reconnattre qu’'ils ont marché dans l'art. Cela d'ailleurs
porte bonheur, et ce n’est pas la foule qui leur en fera
grief. Ce qui n'est qu'une taille successive du diamant
personnel ne peut pas ne pas apparaitre comme art.
L’action de chaque facette sur l'esprit spectateur se
charge de déflorer la vierge.
Que faut-il faire ? Agir contre soi-méme ? Art.
Il reste la purgation. Il est certain que la masse au
point oti elle en est, se confectionnera aussitét un sous-
vétement artistique avec le résultat de cette purgation,
et le revendra au rabais et désodoris¢é. Cher aml 10/80
(APOLDA)
Apollo
PS.
n'achetez pas cela.
Se purger. Et que le sain du moment ne vienne pas
dire ; ga sent mauvais — puisque c'est justement pour
se nettoyer. Et le principe méme de notre nettoyage
est d'en offrir le résidu sur le méme plan que I’haleine
parfumée de notre santé.
Quant au fameux diamant ne le cherchez pas 1a de-
dans. Ni 1a ni ailleurs. Il suffit qu'on le reconnaisse
dans votre estomac grace a la radiographie assermentée
pour yous donner le gros ventre Art.
Et ensuite ? Il n'y a pas d'ensuite. Purgez vous tou-
jours. A part cela, faites de !'épicerie, de l'agriculture,
de la médecine, du commerce en Abyssinie, de la poli-
tique, de l'assassinat, de la philosophie, du suicide, et
méme de I’Art.
Et Dada ?
Mais bien entendu, Dada, c'est... — Non, non

oul
GECRGES RIBEMONT-DESSAIGNES RENAUTOMOBIEL
153

Page from De Stij/ 1921

traces the development of the New Typography back to Marinetti,

Wyndham Lewis’s layout for BLAST in 1914 and the Dadaist
photo-montageur John Heartfield’s layout of the magazine Neue
Jugend, edited by his brother Helmut Herzfeld in 1917. What is
certain is that these different elements fused together about 1920—
21. Van Doesburg’s and Lissitzky’s first typographical designs in
the new style seem to have been approximately contemporaneous
(Lissitzky and van Doesburg did not meet until 1922), but as there
is a marked change in the De Stij/typography after van Doesburg’s
visits abroad in 1920-21 it may well be that the change was the re-
sult of work he had seen in Germany or elsewhere; it can, how-
ever, also be seen as a purification of the original layout for
De Stijl. At any rate it seems certain that both Lissitzky and van
Doesburg were practising the New Typography before it was in-
troduced at the Bauhaus by Moholy-Nagy—in 1923.
85
Werner Graeff Design for a motorbike
From De Stij/ 1922

Increasingly in its international phase the De Stij/ magazine be-

came a vehicle and voice for whatever van Doesburg considered
important. Van Doesburg travelled through Europe in the ‘twenties,
proselytizing for De Stijl in Berlin, in Weimar (at the Bauhaus), in
Prague and in Paris. Although he spread the Style abroad he also
absorbed other styles and activities seemingly at odds with the
original ideas of De Stijl into the pages of the magazine. Dadaism
86
 _. VIRGINIA F vipgiti Mes Blasch ahs
VIRGINIA
HiGaRETTE s

3 al : RIA tie VIRGINIA _ : cel

oo 3S BLANCH 3 CIGARETTES i-

Vilmos Huszar Advertising kiosk

From De Stij/ 1927 (Jubilee number)

(particularly Dadaist poetry), Russian Constructivism and the

‘tough’ school of Berlin abstraction were all given space. Yet al-
though this may have upset purists like Mondrian and others of the
original members of De Stijl, van Doesburg’s inclusiveness wasn’t
really contradictory, and his ability to reconcile such seemingly
opposed manifestations as geometric abstraction and Dadaism
was one of the formative achievements of the ‘twenties.
87
Vordemberge G Idewart Compos. itition
Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
88
 ee

Cesar Domela Composition 1924

Oil. Collection Stedel ijk Museum, Amsterdam
89
Ideals
In De Stijl in 1918 van Doesburg wrote:

Pure thought, in which no image based on phenomena is involved,

but where numbers, measurement, relations and abstract line have
occupied its place, manifests itself by way of the idea, as reason-
ableness in Chinese, Greek and German philosophy and in the
form of beauty in the Neo-plasticism of our time.

Neo-plasticism, or new plasticism (nieuwe bee/ding) was the term

originally adopted by Mondrian from Dr Schoenmaekers to de-
scribe the qualities the De Stijl artists were striving for. The oppo-
site of Neo-plasticism in van Doesburg’s terminology is Neo- or
modern baroque (as exemplified in architecture by the Amsterdam
School).
In the first issue of the De Stij/ magazine in 1917 van Doesburg
wrote in his introduction:

As soon as the artists in the various branches of plastic art will have
realized that they must speak a universal language, they will no
longer cling to their individuality with such anxiety. They will serve
a general principle far beyond the limitations of individuality. By
serving the general principle they will be made to produce, of their
own accord, an organic style... Only by consistently following
this principle can the new plastic beauty manifest itself in all ob-
jects as a style, born from a new relationship between the artist and
society.

Van Doesburg writes in De Stij/ in 1920 that the scientific dis-

coveries and beliefs of an age are reflected in its art; yet, in fact, the
insistence on the straight line and the rectangle seems not to have
been so much a reflection of discoveries in science or even ad-
vances in technology as a common feeling among the artists and
architects that certain forms were appropriate for architecture,
sculpture and painting in the new era ofthe First World War and its
aftermath, a kind of visual cleansing, a rejection of the decorative
luxuriance of the immediately preceding style, Art Nouveau.
Looking back in an article published in an English little maga-
zine Ray in 1927 van Doesburg wrote: ‘To construct... without
any illusion, without any decoration, is one of the principal aims of
the Stij/ movement.’
Painting must be abstract, architecture should be unadorned and
reveal the construction and the function. Oud, in various essays,
90
also pronounces strongly against decoration. Yet the use of the ad-
vancing and receding characteristicsof the primary colours, which
creates illusion, which might even be called decorative, is per-
mitted.
In an article in De Stij/ of 1922 Mondrian makes a distinction
between the new and the new. In the past the old has always at
some time been new; but the new is different. Mondrian sees
man at the turning-point of civilization. Everything old is finished.
The separation between the old and the new is ‘absolute and de-
finite’. It was this sense of the new that the De Stijl artists and
architects wanted to express, the qualities of living in the twen-
tieth century—that made it totally different from the nineteenth
century. Hence soft forms which had a stylistic relation to Art
Nouveau, like those of de Klerk and the Amsterdam School had to
be rejected and attacked.
In his Ray article van Doesburg wrote:

Architecture, the synthesis of all the arts, will spring from the
human function, simply from life, and not as formerly from types
already created by ancient people who had an entirely different
manner of living, different customs and habits, and who thought
in a manner totally different to our way of thought.

In other words, architecture had to change to fit the newness of

twentieth-century life, as had Rietveld’s Schroder house with its
sliding partitions—a flexible space designed to suit the new
informality and flexibility of modern living. Either openness or
closedness are available, the social and the private, or in De Stijl
terminology, the universal and the individual: ‘The new art has
brought forward what the new consciousness of time contains: a
balance between the universal and the individual.’ (‘First Mani-
festo’, De Stij/, 1918)
Writing in 1918, Oud sees a direct connection between art and
the social development of the age and sees a parallel with De Stijl
faith in the universal and abstract in the urge to organize indivi-
duals into ‘groups, unions, leagues, societies, trusts, monopolies
etc’ ; ‘This reconciliation of spiritual and social striving, a necessary
for achieving culture, forms the foundation for style.’ He sees the
spirit of the times expressing itself in machine- rather than hand-
production which reaches only a few rich individuals.
91
 Oud sees the mistake of Ruskin and Morris in that they believed
machine-production capable only of inferior imitations of handi-
crafts and in rejecting the idea of techniques specifically designed
for machine-production. Oud believes that the development of
machine techniques has resulted in ‘pure form’. He writes that
‘the emergence of purity always has aesthetic consequences’ and :
‘That the pure application of machine methods of production leads
to aesthetic results is already proven in: buildings, well-designed
books (printed by machine), textiles, etc.”
Oud ignores the fact that perhaps the first sty/e designed or
evolved specifically for machine-production and in response to
modern technology (for instance, the electric light) had been Art
Nouveau, which was not at all ‘pure’ in form.
In an article on Wright in De Stij/ (1918), Oud says the outside
of the building should make clear what goes on inside: ‘The
organization of the activities in a building leads to one of the dis-
tinguishing features of pure architecture: the expression of this
organization on the outside of the building through a conscious
grouping of the masses.’ Oud doesn’t recognize, however, that the
functions of a building may change and that therefore the group-
ing of the masses of the exterior to express the conceived function
of the building may be unnecessarily rigid. This is why the exterior
of Rietveld’s Schroder house does not ‘express’ the function of the
interior, except insofar as its seemingly unconnected planes sug-
gest the flexible nature of the interior.
Mondrian is more idealistic than Oud, one might say in the light
of subsequent events in the ‘thirties, less realistic, seeing contem-
porary social developments towards the universal and collective
rather than the individual as a move in the direction of socialism or
syndicalism: ‘Autocracy, imperialism with its (natural) law of the
strongest, is about to collapse—if it has not done so already—giving
way to the spiritual powers of law.’ (De Stij/, 1918) Oud, however,
had seen that the same tendency to produce unions, leagues and
societies also produced trusts and monopolies.
Van t’Hoff sees the machine and mechanized building methods ~
as ways of improving the workman’s lot: ‘We demand a maximum
of labour from the machine, a minimum from the workman who
should not be in the least concerned about the personal feelings of
the designer.’ (De Stijl, 1918)
92
 And as late as 1931, in an essay written shortly before his death,
van Doesburg wrote : ‘Under the supremacy of materialism, handi-
crafts reduced men to the level of machines; the proper tendency
for the machine (in the sense of cultural development) is the
unique medium of the very opposite, social liberation.’
In the same essay (and earlier during the ‘twenties), van Does-
burg spoke of the machine as a ‘phenomenon of spiritual dis-
cipline’. Shortly afterwards, the autocracy that Mondrian had
thought to be on the verge of collapse harnessed the ‘phenomenon
of spiritual discipline’ to its own destructive and materialist ends.
In his first article in De Stij/ (1917), Mondrian sees the trend to-
wards an abstract life reflected in trends in interior decoration, in
fashion and even in the dance. (Despite being a reclusive bachelor,
he remained into old age a great dancer.) He sees the tango replac-
ing the waltz—straight lines replacing rounded movements.
Mondrian writes of the metropolis as the embodiment of abstract
life, where nature has been ‘straightened out’. He welcomes the
increasing engulfment of the countryside by the city, rectifying
nature’s ‘capriciousness’ (De Stij/1919, 1922, 1924). Later in life
he hated even natural greenery, several times when dining with
friends in Paris asking to be seated so that he didn’t have to look
out of the window at the green trees. He was never happier than
when in New York during the last years of his life.
In an essay of 1927 Vantongerloo pointed out that nature as we
see it today was not really nature at all, but man-made, or at least
man-controlled nature. The merciless jungle was nature in its
natural state. In a later essay he pointed out that in technological
advances, like the development of the aeroplane, man does not fol-
low nature (i.e. the flight of the bird) but devises his own methods.
In 1927 Mondrian wrote in the magazine that in the future man
‘will select his own surroundings and create them. He will there-
fore not regret the lack of nature, as the masses do, who have been
forced in spite of themselves to leave it... He will build cities,
hygienic and beautiful, by a balanced contrast of buildings, con-
structions and empty spaces. Then he will be quite as happy in-
doors as outdoors.’
For Rietveld the purpose of art, architecture and design, as of all
other worthwhile human endeavour, was to temper nature by
bringing it into a human scale: ‘We must not consider the human
93
scale which in our field is so highly praised, as a cultural attain-
ment. Because in principle we must bring things into a human
scale, in contrast with the inhuman in nature, as a means of self-
preservation. This tendency is universal.’
In De Stij/ in 1923 a manifesto appeared over the signatures of
van Doesburg and van Eesteren, ‘Toward a Collective Construc-
tion’, in which art is seen as a means of controlling the environ-
ment, or perhaps constructing an entirely artificial environment.
Once the environment is constructed there will no longer be any
need for art, except perhaps to adjust the environment according
to changing needs. Like Dada, De Stijl resolves itself to the elimi-
nation of art.
In 1926 van Doesburg published a manifesto in English in De
Stijl entitled ‘The End of Art’:

One cannot renew Art. ‘Art’ is an invention of the Renaissance

which has today refined itself to the utmost degree possible. An
enormous concentration was needed to make good works of Art.
One could only develop this concentration by neglecting life (as in
religion) or to lose life entirely. That is today impossible for we are
only interested in life!
We too must distribute our forces upon all life. That is real pro-
gress. This progress negates exclusive concentration. It can only
give instantaneous snapshots of life. That is the first reason why
Art is impossible.
... Let’s refresh ourselves with things that are not Art: the bath-
room, the W.C., the bathtub, the telescope, the bicycle, the auto,
the subways, the flat-iron. There are many people who know how
to make such good unartistic things. But they are hindered, and
their movements are dictated, by the priests of Art. Art, whose
function nobody knows, hinders the function of life. For the sake
of progress we must destroy Art. Because the function of modern
life is stronger than Art, every attempt to renew Art (Futurism, Cub-
ism, Expressionism) failed. They are all bankrupt. Let us not waste
our time with them. Let us rather create a new life-form which is
adequate to the functioning of modern life.

94
Piet Mondrian Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue and Black 1921
Oil. Collection Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague

4 De Stijl: achievements

Van Doesburg’s adoption of the diagonal element in his paintings

was one of the reasons that led Mondrian to disassociate himself
finally from De Stijl in 1925. (He also disliked van Doesburg’s sup-
port for the Dadaists.) This probably provided a convenient excuse
as Mondrian was reclusive by nature, and having found his way in-
tended to pursue it single-mindedly without reference to what
95
I

Piet Mondrian Composition 1932

Oil. Courtesy Marlborough Gallery, London

other artists were doing. Mondrian’s work had evolved into what
was to be his mature style in the compositions of 1921 with their
rectangular flat planes of primary colour bound by black lines
which often stop slightly short of the edge of the painting. These
works are marked by a strong asymmetry of composition yet retain
the balance that Mondrian regarded as so important. Through the
‘twenties and ‘thirties his work becomes progressively refined and
dematerialized.
96
 ra va
TE NVINZI
BEESEE
0 S¢Hf NIN
EEG os NVT
EE: GEESE
s2egigs
eee
ge eo A
sgiehe?oh KP SD
B2eeets NZNZ
y
Pash SEN

2
&
= coe
®©O06o fan

B35
£&£e

Sts)

2
es ate NSP CS
ca im Ol GOS
 oS

oN
RIN
PAN
Hee.

SN
SRS.
IS ee
SSeS
oe
S& es eS

Theo van Doesburg Counter-construction 1923

Gouache. Collection Mrs N. van Doesburg
98
Theo van Doesburg, Counter-composition 1924
Gouache. Collection Centraal Museum, Utrecht

By the mid-‘twenties van Doesburg was no longer interested in

preserving balance and equilibrium. In 1926 he wrote in De Stijl:
‘In counter-composition, equilibrium in the plane plays a less im-
portant part. Each plane is part of peripheric space and construc-
tion has to be more conceived as a phenomenon of tension than
as one of relations in the plane.’
In Rietveld’s red-blue chair, the black horizontal members pro-
vide the structural frame of the chair, the support. The two diagonal
boards transfer the weight of the sitter to this frame and, when the
chair is empty, seem visually to represent symbolically or abstractly
the sitter, the human figure. This diagonal abstraction of the human
figure re-enters De Stijl in van Doesburg’s counter-compositions,
but unlike Rietveld’s chair it is not held in balance, it is dynamic.
99
Theo van Doesburg Counter-composition V 1924
Oil. Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
100
Theo van Doesburg and Cornelis van Eesteren Design for Amsterdam
university hall, 1923

Van Doesburg wrote about his similar use of the dynamic diagonal
in the decoration of the Aubette in these terms in 1928: ‘The track
of man in space (from the left to the right, from front to back, from
above to below) has become of fundamental importance for paint-
ing in architecture.’
Van Doesburg’s first use of the dynamic diagonal seems to have
been in a scheme for the hall of Amsterdam university, designed in
collaboration with van Eesteren. Maybe the idea of using diagonals
came originally from the diagonal lines (indicating three-dimen-
sional relationships) in architects’ isometric drawings, such as
those produced in 1923, when van Doesburg also collaborated
with van Eesteren on the design for a private house commissioned
by Léonce Rosenberg in Paris and a projected ‘house for an artist’.
The university hall (like the two houses) was never built, which
is a tragedy, because from the drawings it appears to have been at
least as exciting a design as the Aubette. Some of the exhilaration
that must have been felt in the cinema-café room of the Aubette
can be seen in van Doesburg’s Counter-composition, in the
Gemeente-museum, the Hague (page 8). For the dance-hall of the
Aubette, van Doesburg used only horizontal and vertical planes
101
 2
oy

TS Se

<

ONG
—

Lo

<
BE
ee
Reconstruction of the café-cinema of the Aubette, Strasbourg,
1927, designed by Theo van Doesburg (original destroyed)
Collection Stedelijk van Abbemuseum Eindhoven

on pages 102 and 103 Reconstruction of the dance-hall of the

Aubette, Strasbourg, 1927, designed by Theo van Doesburg (original
destroyed)
Collection Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
104
Theo van Doesburg Café-cinema, Aubette, Strasbourg, 1927
(destroyed)

and lines, presumably because there was sufficient ‘movement’

in the art of dancing itself. For the sedentary caté-cinema van
Doesburg used the more dynamic diagonal schemes. The café-
cinema was decorated in two shades of red, two yellows, green,
blue, black, white and two shades of grey, the dance-hall with
the same colours, except that blue and green are replaced
by two shades of blue. One of the most dramatic features of
the dance-hall was the grouping of light bulbs in rows to make
up square panels of points of light on ceiling and walls.
105
Theo van Doesburg and Cornelis van Eesteren Design for van
Doesburg’s studio at Meudon, near Paris, 1929
From De Stij/ 1932 (last, memorial number)
106
Theo van Doesburg and Cornelis van Eesteren Studio for van
Doesburg
Photograph from De Stij/ 1932 (last, memorial number)

Van Doesburg’s last important work was his design for his own
studio at Meudon, near Paris, for which he also designed the
furniture and fitments. Suitably for a private home and work-place
(rather than a public or social centre like the café-cinema of the
Aubette or the university hall), van Doesburg composed his studio
in restful horizontals. It is a design of quiet subtlety and balanced
purity. Van Doesburg had intended it to be the centre of renewed
De Stijl activity as well as his studio, but he died before it was fin-
ished. He was forty-seven.
107
Theo van Doesburg and Cornelis van Eesteren Design for house,
commissioned by Léonce Rosenberg, 1923 (not executed)

It might be said of van Doesburg as has been said by Maxwell

Fry of Moholy-Nagy, that the trouble was that he always had
six ideas at once. Having found an idea van Doesburg would
sometimes only hastily sketch it out before rushing onto the next
idea. He had tremendous energy and enthusiasm and the capacity
to inspire others, although sometimes this was taken to the point
of aggression and he would turn his former collaborators against
108
 =

3i
.

i
=

Theo van Doesburg and Cornelis van Eesteren Model of house for an
artist, 1923 (not executed)

him. Van Doesburg left relatively few paintings and the quality
of these is uneven. Yet he was an important painter and could
have been a great one if he had wanted to. After 1920 he became
less and less interested in being a painter of finished easel
pictures. Most of his paintings are not particularly well-finished;
even before he began to collaborate on a large scale with architects
his paintings look like sketches for environmental works.
109
 ee

Sie
aR
wa
el
pciento
pie
lesersiac
aap

sacar
osiaenpae
geese
_wipes

es ee cae
Theo van Doesburg Composition 17 1919
Oil. Collection Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague

J.J.P.Oud Coloured drawing for the Café Unie, Rotterdam, 1925

Collection Mrs J.M.A.Oud-Dinaux
=

~
.
SO

_
.
<
5
Co
>

Oe
.
<—
<<
"By .

mee oe
Zor

Photograph of a room at the van Doesburg exh ion at the Stedel ijk van
Abbemuseum , Eindhoven 1968/69. , show ing the tubular furniture des igned
by van Doesburg for h is s tud io at Meudon , 1929 The sta ine d glass on the left
was des igne d by van Doesburg in 1921

112
 a
OS
SNES

11 3
 John Berger has recently written, in a review of a book by Max
Raphael (a critic cited by van Doesburg in his Bauhaus book) that:
‘Since 1848 every artist unready to be a mere paid entertainer has
tried to resist the bourgeoisation of his finished work, the trans-
formation of the spiritual value of his work into property value.’
This is particularly true of van Doesburg. Like Moholy-Nagy and
Lissitzky, van Doesburg was not a great artist in terms of a large
body of major paintings. Like them he was one of the great cata-
lyst figures of the ‘twenties and like them his work has to be judged
as a whole, as painter, writer, typographer, designer and propagan-
dist. Taken in this way their contribution to twentieth-century art
is as important as that of the great innovators like Kandinsky,
Mondrian and Malevich.
The relationship of van Doesburg’s work to that of Mondrian is
similar to that of Lissitzky or Moholy-Nagy to Malevich. They saw
the implications of the experiments in pure painting of Mondrian
and Malevich in terms of typographical, architectural and environ-
mental developments as much as in painting and were able to lay
the foundations for these in their own works and in their writings.
Their aim was to bring art closer to life.

Rietveld’s most important early commission was the interior with

furniture and fittings for Dr Hartog at Maarsen. This has been
destroyed and all that remains is a few photographs which none-
theless show the character of this extraordinary work. The rectiline-
arity of the furniture is relieved by a circle painted on the wall. The
chest of shallow drawers is an obvious relative of the buffet (page
26) with its protruding structural members and gaps between each
drawer so that each remains visually discrete. The light-fitting is
one of the simplest and most effective of all Rietveld’s designs. The
four long bulbs were standard Philips’ fitments. Rietveld attached
black-painted wooden cubes to either end and suspended them
from the ceiling with flex, two horizontally and two vertically. An-
other version with only one vertical element was made for the
Schroder house.
114
115
Gerrit Rietveld Hanging lamp, 1920

Gerrit Rietveld Construction c. 1920

Collection Centraal Museum, Utrecht

The light-fittings that Rietveld designed for the interior of a

jewellery shop in Amsterdam about the same time consisted simply
of clusters of bare bulbs suspended at different distances from the.
ceiling. Rietveld also used this system of hanging bare bulbs in the
remodelling of an interior in 1921 for Mrs Schroder, for whom he
later designed the Schroder house. A small lamp that Rietveld de-
signed in 1925 consisted principally of a single bare bulb painted
black except for a small circular area at the bottom (see page 118).
116
117
Gerrit Rietveld with T. Schréder-Schrader Radio cabinet 1925 (destroyed)
Designed to show all the functioning parts of the radio equipment. The lamp
at the top is similar to Rietveld’s table lamp (see right). Unfortunately
when completed the radio did not work. The mechanic who was called in
loosened the wrong screw and the glass cabinet was shattered. It was never
repaired.

The Schroder house was the first complete building designed by

Rietveld. He had originally been a cabinet-maker, following his
father’s trade, but had studied architecture at night school under
Klaarhamer. The site for the Schréder house was picked because
it was the only one available with access to the country. When
118
 a

4,
Gerrit Rietveld Schroder house, Prins Hendriklaan, Utrecht, 1924

it was built it was the last house in the town, looking across
meadows. Unfortunately the site has now been disfigured by a
raised motorway, although even this visual and auditory intrusion
cannot destroy the relationship that the house creates between the
space within it and the space outside.
It has often been claimed that van Doesburg and van Eesteren’s
plan for a house for Léonce Rosenberg of 1923 (for which Riet-
veld made a model) influenced his design of the Schroder house.
i)
Schrdder house plan, first floor (open)

This is probably true, although Rietveld’s design is far more radical

than even his own cardboard model for the 1923 scheme which is
still basically a series of cubic volumes, loosely held together, al-
though some of van Doesburg’s drawings related to this scheme
are closer to the Schroder house. The more direct parallel is with
Rietveld’s own chair made for an exhibition in Berlin in 1923, an
asymmetrical composition of planes only. There is no framework of
wooden rails as with the red-blue chair and most of Rietveld’s
other early chairs (see page 126).
That Rietveld. succeeded in achieving what van Doesburg and
van Eesteren had envisaged in their schemes is clear from van
Doesburg’s immediate enthusiasm for the Schroder house. It
remains the only realization in terms of actual architecture of the
most advanced spatial ideas of De Stijl.
The planes that form its walls and windows, balconies and roof
seem to fly out into space in an even more daring and exhilarating
way than the wooden rails of the red-blue chair, although directly
related to it. On the first floor the windows swing open so that the
space inside the house flows through into the garden. The space
120
 sleeping al
9
[1
2

sw
iee
cpa
eee i |
lt
b
7)
<
Wi
WEST

=
b
i a
| ce)
SOUTH z

SOUTH EAST

Schréder house plan, first floor (closed)

outside flows into the interior. The apple trees in the garden appear
to live inside the house with its occupants. The partitions which
divide the upper floor can be slid right back so that the whole floor
becomes an envelope of space where only the arrangement of the
furniture and the activity of the inhabitants defines the function of
any particular area. Alternatively, the partitions can be closed if
privacy is desired, forming four separate rooms. It is the first
modern open-plan house; the first truly flexible dwelling which
takes into account the increasing informality and freedom of social
and living arrangements in the twentieth century.
Rietveld was never a functionalist. He was too far ahead of his
time for that. He realized that the functions of a modern building
are liable to change continually. Here he was probably helped by
the far-sightedness of his patron Truus Schroder-Schrader who
acted as a collaborator with Rietveld on the design of the interior
of her house and also on some later schemes. She insisted that
each room (or partitionable space onthe upper floor) should be
equipped with a bed, cooking facilities and a sink. Many years
later, during the Second World War, Mrs Schroder had to let off
121
_

boy gy
YY
wy

eC
Aan
ett
RE
CAREY
ORCS
PIII
Liber
ERD
eit
several rooms in the house, and the fittings in each room proved
to have been a very practical forethought. Throughout the forty-
five years of its existence the interior arrangements have been con-
stantly changed around. Until his death in 1964, Rietveld added
new furniture and fitments to Mrs Schréder’s requirements, such
as the elegant metal staircase leading up to the skylight. Originally
the kitchen was on the ground floor and there was a room for a ser-
vant behind. Now there is no servant the kitchen has been moved
upstairs. The Schroder house was planned with the living area up-
stairs while downstairs are small enclosed rooms for studying and
other private activities. (Le Corbusier was similarly to plan the liv-
ing areas on the first floor of the Villa Savoie—designed five years
after the Schroder house.) When Mrs Schroder’s children were

Interior of Schroder house, summer 1968, showing some later additions (by
Rietveld) like the metal staircase. Zig-zag chair designed by Rietveld in
1934. Detail (left) hanging lamp (1920) and partition round stair-well,
metal staircase beyond.
Photographs, the author
 Ky

Gerrit Rietveld Schroder House, from the back, showing the corner which
disappears’ when the windows are opened
Photograph, Brian Housden
124
growing up the first floor was often partitioned off to give them
the privacy they needed. When they left home it became open
again; it can be opened during the day and closed at night. The
changes the house has undergone since it was built is the record
of the life and changing circumstances of a family. Its admirable
flexibility enabled the house to be easily adapted to suit the occu-
pants’ changing needs.
In 1928 Rietveld wrote: ‘Functional architecture must not just
slavishly satisfy existing needs; it must also reveal living condi-
tions.’
Although many commentators, including Walter Gropius, have
assumed that the Schroder house is constructed of reinforced con-
crete this is not so. Only the foundations and the balcony slabs are
of concrete. The rest of the house is traditional Dutch brick and
wood construction, although steel I-beams are used for lintels and
to support the roof and balconies. At the time when it was built, re-
inforced concrete would have been beyond the modest budget
allowed for the house. Also it was the first complete building that
Rietveld had designed and he was possibly chary of using this new
method of construction. The steel |-beams above the windows are
painted black so that they disappear in the shadow of the roof and
balcony planes; the brick is rendered over and painted white and
grey to look like concrete. It is unlikely that Rietveld intended to
deliberately deceive anyone. His house is a statement of what
could be done in concrete (and many architects since have taken
Rietveld’s point), just as the red-blue chair was a statement of
what cou/d be done in terms of mass-production or standardiza-
tion. (No manufacturer ever gave Rietveld the chance to realize
this himself.)
The Schroder house looks tenuously balanced, like a pack of
cards. So much so that apparently crowds gathered round it,
shortly after it was completed, waiting for its imminent collapse ! In
the Fagus factory (see page 22) Gropius had moved the corner
supports back so that the glass met, separated by only a thin metal
corner-piece. In the east corner on the upper floor of the Schroder
house Rietveld produced an even more visually exciting solution.
The steel structural beam supporting the roof ismoved aboutafoot
to one side. A long window on the south-east side and a small
window on the north-east meet at the east corner where this

125
Gerrit Rietveld Berlin Chair, 1923
The chair was exhibited in Berlin in an interior by Huszar. Collection Mr and
Mrs Brian Housden

structural support has been displaced. When these two windows

are opened the corner disappears. The wide-flung windows extend
into the space around the house like the wooden rails of the
red-blue chair and seem to direct and channel the flow of outside
space into the interior.
Rietveld believed that architecture (or furniture) by limiting
space, made space ‘real’, that space doesn’t exist until it is
limited. Similarly, objects and materials only become real or visible
through their limitation.
Standing before a Rietveld chair or sitting in one, you are made
acutely conscious of the relationship of your own body to the
things around you and to the space that your own body occupies.
In the Schréder house one is exhilaratingly aware of space as an
almost tangible entity.
Many years after designing the Schroder house Rietveld wrote:
‘lf, for a particular purpose, we separate, limit and bring into a
human scale a part of unlimited space, it is (if all goes well) a piece
of space brought to life as reality. In this way, a special segment of
space has been absorbed into our human system.’ (1957)
126
Georges Vantongerloo Groupe y = ax? bx + ¢ 1931
Wood painted grey. Courtesy Marlborough Gallery, London

It is fairly clear that Rietveld regarded his furniture as much as a

kind of sculpture as furniture, and his earlier pieces produced in the
years immediately before and after 1920 offer visual parallels with
the sculpture of Vantongerloo, whose view of space was close to
that of Rietveld, although expressed usually in more philosophical,
less pragmatic terms:

Since man moves, the concept of space is inherent in him. Our

senses imply the notion. Without our senses, it is obvious that we
should not need it. We need space in order to situate objects.
Space, which is indispensable to us (though we cannot define it),
is inseparable from life. We cannot conceive of existence without
space. (1930)

In Vantongerloo’s sculpture of the late ‘twenties and early

‘thirties volume is replaced by planes or elements similar to those
of Rietveld’s early furniture. The positive-negative, volume-void
interchange is replaced by a definition and extension of space by
means of planes or elements. These fly out and seemingly hover in
space with the same quality of exhilaration as the elements of
127
Rietveld’s buffet, the planes of the Berlin chair or the walls,
balconies and open windows of the Schroder house.
Rietveld’s early chairs measure out space with their discrete,
visually separated elements. But the space that they measure out
is our own space, because as well as being a kind of sculpture these
are chairs whose scale is directly related to the human body they
are designed to accommodate. As we look at them they are a kind
of abstraction of our own bodies sitting in space. When we sit in
them we are made aware of our own body and its relationship to
and displacement of space by the pressure of the hard wood on
our limbs.
Nikolaus Pevsner has called the red-blue armchair (in Sources
of Modern Architecture and Design) : ‘the first piece of furniture
embodying the principles of De Stijl—where comfort has yielded
to geometry.’ In fact the red-blue chair is reasonably comfortable,
although it does tend to /ook uncomfortable. There is an early
photograph of Rietveld sitting in the first version of the chair
(it had side-pieces) about 1918, surrounded by his grinning car-
penters. He looks perfectly at ease and comfortable; nor does his
pose look feigned. In the early version the red-blue chair does not
seem to have been red, blue, black and yellow at all. It appears to
have been unpainted and in this state it was illustrated in 1919 in
the De Stij/ magazine. Presumably it was painted later on, perhaps
at the suggestion of van Doesburg.
The colour makes it look more uncomfortable than it is. The
red plank of the back coming forward, the blue plane of the seat
receding. You perhaps subconsciously feel that the back will
slap you and the seat disappear under you. However, although the
colour may make the chair look more uncomfortable it undoubtedly
adds to its effect as sculpture, dematerializing the planes, making
the seat and back appear to float on air, because the black-painted
frame tends to disappear visually (particularly on a dark floor or
against dark walls, as was intended).
One of the functions of Rietveld’s chairs, with their hard seats
and backs, is to focus our senses, to make us alert and aware. Riet-
veld was not interested in conventional ideas of comfort (the
nineteenth-century armchair that relaxes you so much that you
spill your coffee or fall asleep over your book). He wished to keep
the sitter physically and mentally ‘toned up’.
128
Rietveld sitting in the first version of the red-blue chair surrounded by his
carpenters (about 1919)

Mrs Schréder has written of this chair:

But a chair being a piece of furniture has still other functions than
being or looking comfortable or ‘not uncomfortable’. It should,
like the other furniture, help to realize the space of a room, to
make of interior space: interior architecture—developing and en-
riching the sensory perceptions of space, colour etc. It should...
not disturb space working (as it most of the time does, if you do
not pay attention) but it should let space pass through and around
—realizing each other. If you translate ‘to sit’ into Dutch it is
Zitten and Zitten is also an activity. (From a letter to the author)
129
Gerrit Rietveld Row-houses, Utrecht; left 1930-31, right 1934

Gerrit Rietveld Shop, Zaudy, Wesel (Germany), 1928 (destroyed)

In the ‘twenties Rietveld had mainly worked on private commis-

sions for remodelling interiors or on the alteration of shop-fronts,
some of which were among his most exciting works, like Zaudy at
Wesel, in Germany. In the ‘thirties Rietveld produced some in-
teresting experiments in low-cost housing, although mainly
designed for the middle classes rather than the working class, like
Oud’s housing schemes. In the late ‘twenties Rietveld experi-
mented with some revolutionary ideas that unfortunately he was
never given the chance to develop further. These were the use of
130
fe AT Lea HN 2 =

RAN
Se Sea

eR EEERISA
 saat

Gerrit Rietveld Chauffeur’s house and garage, Utrecht, 1927-28

Gerrit Rietveld Crate furniture (chair) 1934

Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

132
prefabricated concrete planks, one metre by three, on a frame-
work of steel |-beams, in the chauffeur’s house of 1927-28, and
his scheme of 1929 (exhibited but never executed) of the ‘core
house’, the central services area of which (stairs, hall, bathroom,
piping, wiring, etc) were to be made in a factory and the rest of
the house built round it /n situ according to the number of rooms
needed, etc. In 1934 he designed ‘crate furniture’ which could be
assembled by the purchaser from pre-cut boxwood parts. This
seems to have been one of the earliest examples of inexpensive
knock-down furniture.

Gerrit Rietveld Crate furniture (table) 1934

Collection Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

133
Oud’s Café Unie (see page 15), destroyed in the bombing of
Rotterdam in 1940, looks closer to Mondrian’s compositions of the
early ‘twenties than to Rietveld’s chair or the Schroder house. This
might seem to confirm the argument of van Doesburg and Oud
that painting influenced architecture at this time. However, the

J.J.P.Oud Temporary manager's hut for the Oud-Mathenesse housing

estate, 1923
The hut was painted in primary colours

134
J.J.P.OQud Photograph taken in the ‘thirties by Moholy-Nagy

parallel with van Doesburg’s layout of the cover of the De Stij/

magazine from 1921 is even closer.
The photographs of the street frontage reveal it to have been an
essentially two-dimensional facade. Architecture is basically three-
dimensional, concerned with space we can move about in. But it
can sometimes have other functions. The front of a shop or a
restaurant is a sign beckoning the passer-by. Oud brilliantly incor-
porates lettering as part of the facade, relating it to the solid and
transparent elements (windows and walling), drawing the passer-
by’s attention to the kind of building it is, leading the eye down
to its ground-floor windows through which the interior of the café
can be seen and to the door through which he is invited to enter.
Here the New Typography is ingeniously combined to serve a prac-
tical purpose (advertisement) and also to contribute an exciting
and exhilarating element to the urban landscape. This has now be-
come commonplace, but never quite so subtly and imaginatively
realized as in Oud’s Unie.
Like the Café Unie, the temporary manager's hut for the Oud-
Matthenesse (oud means ‘old’ in Dutch) is one of Oud’s most re-
markable and imaginative works. Although great attention is given
to the surface of the walling, with its quasi-concentric geometric
motif (used also in the Unie), this small building is an exception
A135
 7
ye ;

LOSOT a Re
ee
Li
_ .
De :

J.J.P.Oud Housing estate at Hook of Holland, designed 1924

136
137
 com-
among Oud’s work in that it is as much a spatial as a surface
as in Riet-
position, albeit of spatial volume, rather than of planes,
has an exceptio nal
veld’s Schroder house. Oud’s best work always
shed. The way in which the series
purity, none more than this little
d from
of windows which give top-lighting are visually separate
the
the roof by only the thinnest of lines is highly refined, and
handling of surfaces and inter-relation of volumes is of extreme
sensitivity.
The Oud-Matthenesse estate itself was more conventional than
the temporary manager's hut, in the tradition of Dutch single-
of the
storey cottages with sharply pitched roofs. In the detailing
facades, chimneys and lintels however, Oud’s refinemen t of design
is clearly revealed.
undertaken after he had severed his
These commissions were
connection with De Stijl. As early as the first volume of the maga-
zine Oud had written:

The subordination of the utilitarian to the idealistic aspect would

be detrimental to the cultural and general values and would only
hamper the striving for style. For the development of an architec-
tural style, a good house (in the sense of technical and practical
purity) is therefore of greater importance than a beautiful house.

J.J.P.Oud ‘Allegonda’, Katwyk. Remodelled interior and furniture, 1927

138
aS - 7oo
EEE
POS
Co
2S <
— a \
OC
CO
YO
— & SOO >
CO me So
US

NC
BI
a.
CoO
.
oo

oN

139
 tural
In his Hook and Kiefhoek schemes Oud achieved an architec
house. Oud wrote
style in which a good house was also a beautiful
order, for
of ‘the need for number and measure, for cleanliness and
finish’. He
standardization and repetition, for perfection and high
ble
created a style that was anonymous but not inhuman, compara
ture of Holland in
in this way to the anonymous domestic architec
the seventeenth century and of France and England in the eigh-
ex-
teenth century. These housing schemes are among the earliest
so
amples of the International Style so widely adopted since and
often debased.
The Hook of Holland estate is quite different from Oud-Matthe-
are in-
nesse. Instead of separate cottages the terraces of houses
tegrated together into long streamlined blocks with rounded
corners and balconies which extend the full length of the terraces.
metal
The extent of each living unit is defined by the dividing
fences at balcony level and the low-walle d areas in front of the

front doors. The curved end of the terraces form shops and the
curve of the glass shop-fronts and concrete cantilevered slabs
which offer protection to the shopper from rain or sun, provide
focal points and an element of visual drama. The smooth white
surface of the facades is contrasted with the rough texture of
the cobbles and sets of road and pavement.

J.J.P.Oud Housing estate at Hook of Holland, designed 1924

Rounded shop-fronts
140
CESMSR

LENSER
SHORE

LDMOS
J.J.P.Oud Kiefhoek housing estate, Rotterdam, 1925-9

In Kiefhoek, designed in the following year, the rounded shop.

ends are more restrained, the protective concrete canopy less dra-
matic, but the treatment of the terraces is more sophisticated. The
windows form a continuous band and each separate house is not
so deliberately divided from its neighbour as at Hook. Yet visiting
Kiefhoek today, beautifully kept, with the window of each front
142
 Q

<e
Les
as
-ZsISoR
NS
SZ
aS

J.J.P.Oud Kiefhoek housing estate, Rotterdam, 1925-9

on pages 144 and 145

J.J.P.Oud Drawing for housing scheme, Blijdorp, Rotterdam, 1931 (not
executed)

room containing a different arrangement of potted plants, you

never feel that the individual household is submerged com-
pletely in the social ideal. The idea of an urban village which
makes no concessions to cottaginess seems to work well. Noth-
ing so successful seems to have been achieved in the rebuilding of
Rotterdam since the last war. The contrast between the cobbled
143
ie tyre Be MO ogRO PEE DUST IE LW laiiplabslle Weta &
LO Tas
J.J.P.Oud Kiefhoek housing estate, Rotterdam, 1925—9
Ground and first floor plan of terrace houses

road and the smooth facades is repeated, as at Hook, and there is

more use of exposed brick in the garden walls and beneath the
lower windows. The lintels and window-frames are gaily painted
in bright colours. In Oud’s Kiefhoek, as with the Schroder house,
one feels a realization of the balance between the private and the
social, the individual and the universal, which was the most im-
portant principle of De Stijl.
146
 sliieahalalanlanladdii
suuruueee:

J.J.P.OQud Drawing for housing scheme, Blijdorp, Rotterdam,

1931 (not executed)
147
5 Conclusions

that the De
Van Doesburg embraced Dadaism because he saw
d into life itself (and perhaps
Stijl belief that art must be extende
r as a separate entity) and the Dadaist at-
consequently disappea
on art and society brought artists to the same point although
tack
the three great
from two different directions. It would seem that of
catalyst figures of the ‘twentie s (Moholy -Nagy, Lissitzky, van
Doesbur g was the first to realize this. Moholy-
Doesburg) van
tivist- Dadaist
Nagy has described what happened at the Construc
congress in 1922:

congress in
The Constructivists living in Germany ... called a
amaze-
October of 1922, in Weimar. Arriving there, to our great
we found also the Dadaists, Hans Arp and Tristan Tzara. This
ment
at that
caused a rebellion against the host, Doesburg, because
in com-
time we felt in Dadaism a destructive and obsolete force
parison with the new outlook of the Constructivists.
the
Doesburg, a powerful personality, quieted the storm and
accepted to the dismay of the younger, purist mem-
guests were
a
bers who slowly withdrew and let the congress turn into
Dadaistic performance. At that time, we did not realize that Does-
Dada
burg himself was both a Constructivist and Dadaist, writing
poems under the pen name of I.K.Bonse t.
(Vision in Motion, Chicago 1947)

In 1922-23 van Doesburg edited four issues of a Dadaist maga-

con-
zine Mecano which he published from Leiden (running
currently with De Stij/). In 1921 he had written to Kok: ‘I intend
to edit a splendid bulletin, on the meanest paper existing, but still
very modern.’ The four issues appeared on yellow, blue, red and
white paper respectively. The first three issues were printed on
both sides of a large folded broadsheet, the last issue on four sim-
ilar sheets. In the last (white) issue van Doesburg wrote an article
entitled ‘Towards a Constructive Poetry’ in which he refers to ‘the
blue-jackets of the new Constructivist art’ and writes: ‘To accept
the purely utilitarian as the whole foundation for a new art form =
madness.’
148
(Uit de serie: SOLDATEN 1916) VOORBIJTREKKENDE TROEP

RUITER Ran sel

Stap : = ae

Paard dee ae
m-se

STAP Ran-sel
PAARD Ran-sel
Stap Ran-sel
Paard. Ran-sel
STAPPE —PAARD BLik - ken-trommel
s

STAPPE PAARD zs
STAPPE PAARD BLik - ken-trommel
STAPPE PAARD STAPPE PAARD .
STEPPE PAARD STEPPE PAARD BLikken TRommel
STEPPE PAARD STEPPE PAARD RANSEL

STIPPE PAARD STIPPE PAARD STIPPE PAARD .

cers ey Brikken trommel
STIP PAARD BLikken trommel
STIP raneoa
BLikken trommel
WOLK RANSEL
162

I.K.Bonset (Theo van Doesburg) Poems from De Stij/, 1921

Hans Richter has described a Dadaist lecture tour of Holland that

van Doesburg made with his wife and Kurt Schwitters :

After Does had once experienced Dada, he threw himself into it

wholeheartedly. With his wife—the pianist Nelly van Doesburg,
who played modern music—and with Schwitters, he executed a
unique Dada tour of Holland, in which Does appeared as orator
and expounded the Spirit of Dada. In these expositions, he was in-
terrupted from time to time by a member of the audience who gave
avery realistic imitation of a barking dog. When the audience made
ready to eject the enormously tall gentleman who was doing the
barking, the speaker on the platform introduced him as Kurt
Schwitters. (Hans Richter, Dadaism, London 1965)
149
Rietveld Chair, 1919
This replica made under the direction of Rietveld is in a different wood from
the original which was exhibited at the Bauhaus in 1923. Collection Mr &
Mrs Brian Housden

Richter also describes van Doesburg’s collaboration with Arp

and his wife, Sophie Talber-Arp, on the Aubette:

Each of the three decorated one-third of the building. In this way

they produced the first great abstract frescoes. Arp’s agile
arabesques, Doesburg’s Neo-plastic purism and Sophie's lively
divisions of space did not confict with each other. They com-
plemented each other. Anti-art and art had come together, and
now each gazed into the other's face as if in a mirror, restored to
youth and, as if miraculously, sprung from the same stock.
150
Prophetically van Doesburg realized that a purely utilitarian
Constructivism would produce stony fruit. The only true way for-
ward was by a synthesis of the mainstream tradition of twentieth-
century art and design (De Stijl, Constructivism) with the ‘other
tradition’ of Dadaism.

The relationship between De Stijl and the Bauhaus is interesting

although confused. From Holland, van Doesburg had been an early
admirer of the Bauhaus, but when he visited it at Weimar early in
1921 he was bitterly disappointed.
It has been said that van Doesburg had earlier been promised a
job at the Bauhaus and that when he arrived at Weimar Gropius
went back on his word. Gropius has denied this, saying that van
Doesburg only asked him for a job when he arrived in 1921. (It is
not denied that van Doesburg was refused the post.) Whatever the
truth of the matter, van Doesburg’s subsequent attacks on the Bau-
haus are unlikely to have been the result of personal spite. From all
accounts, the Bauhaus was in a period of crisis at that time and full
of contradictions. In De Stij/ in 1922 van Doesburg wrote that the
Bauhaus was as much a parody of modern ideas as the church was
a parody of Christianity and described the Expressionist- orientated
designs being produced there as ‘ultra-baroque’. As he had not
been given a teaching post at the Bauhaus, van Doesburg started
his own Stijl course in Weimar in 1922. This was attended by many
Bauhaus students, particularly those who disliked Itten’s Expres-
sionist and self-expressionist influence. Van Doesburg’s aggres-
sive lectures (he lampooned the arty-crafty cradle that the
students had designed for Itten’s new-born baby, for instance)
served to focus the unrest that was already fermenting under the
surface among many of the Bauhaus students. Van Doesburg did
not, as he later claimed, single-handedly alter the direction of the
Bauhaus, but he was a powerful influence in bringing the crisis of
1921-22 to a head. The change came when Itten resigned and
Gropius appointed Moholy-Nagy in his place.
In 1923 Gropius invited Rietveld to contribute to an exhibition
to be shown during the Bauhaus week. Rietveld sent a chair of
1919 (see page 150). Van Doesburg was furious at this collabora-
tion with the enemy and wrote an angry letter to Rietveld which is
quoted by Theodore Brown in his monograph on Rietveld. The
151
postcript read : ‘| have given up completely the desire to work to-
wards a collective goal. | am very sad because of this kick from
you, from whom | /east expected it.’
By 1924 van Doesburg, however, was reconciled to the Bau-
haus, probably as a result of the changes that had been made there.
At any rate relations were sufficiently cordial for van Doesburg’s
Principles of Neo-Plastic Art to appear in the series of Bauhaus
Books in 1925. (Mondrian’s essays on Neo-plasticism and Oud’s
essays on Dutch architecture were also published as Bauhaus
Books.)

In 1923 Léonce Rosenberg invited van Doesburg to show the

architectural ideas of De Stijl at his Paris gallery L’Effort Moderne.
The exhibition included the model and drawings for a private house
that Rosenberg had commissioned, the designs for an artist’s
house and for the hall of a university, all by van Doesburg and van
Eesteren. There were also drawings and photographs of work by
the other architects and designers who had been associated with
De Stijl.
This exhibition was so successful that a further show was organ-
ized in Paris at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in 1924 and later
the same year the exhibition moved to Nancy in eastern France.
No doubt these two exhibitions stimulated French architects and
designers. Le Corbusier's use of colour in interiors seems to date
from about this time.
In 1925 De Stijl was excluded from the Arts Décoratifs exhibition
in Paris. Van Doesburg was furious that the Dutch authorities had
not invited the De Stijl designers to participate. De Stijl principles
were, however, displayed in the Austrian pavilion, designed by
Frederic Kiesler, who had been associated with De Stijl since
1923. With the Schréder house this was the most daring and
imaginative spatial conception of De Stijl actually executed. A
counter-exhibition was organized for work which had been
refused, entitled L’Art d‘Aujourd’hui, which included a com-
prehensive display of recent De Stijl work.

152
Frederik Kiesler ‘City in Space’
Shown in the Austrian Pavilion, Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, Paris 1925

153
Van Doesburg’s The Cow, 1917 compared with Gropius’ director's house,
Bauhaus, Dessau, 1926 (opposite)
From De Stij/ by Alfred H. Barr, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1961

Many attempts have been made to show the influence of De

Stijl painting—as opposed to De Stijl architecture and design—on
the architecture and design of the ‘twenties, both at the Bauhaus
and elsewhere. Not many of these attempts are very convincing.
One of the more plausible is Alfred H. Barr's juxtaposition of Gro-
pius’ director’s house for the Dessau Bauhaus (1926) with van
Doesburg’s painting The Cow (1916-17). The visual parallel is
154
certainly compelling. However, there are many earlier architectural
precedents for Gropius’ use of asymmetrically arranged elements;
for instance, the Californian architect Irving Gill’s Walter Dodge
house, Los Angeles (1915-16), or, much earlier, Godwin’s white
house designed for Whistler. However, it is amusing to believe
that one of the most important elements in modern architecture,
asymmetricality, might be derived from a Dutch cow!
155
156
 The works of van Doesburg that were certainly influential on the
subsequent development of modern architecture are his drawings
and plans for the house for Léonce Rosenberg of 1923 and for the
‘artist's house’ (with van Eesteren). Van Eesteren’s own im-
portant influence on the development of town-planning is un-
doubted. (He was appointed chief civil engineer/town planner for
Amsterdam in 1929.)
The one specific area where De Stijl influence on the Bauhaus
seems Certain is in furniture design. A film strip made of the de-
velopment of Marcel Breuer’s furniture shows the direct impinge-
ment of Rietveld’s chair shown at the Bauhaus Week exhibition,
although in his 1924 wooden chair Breuer has already developed
the idea in the direction of greater flexibility (as Rietveld himself
had done since making the 1919 chair, in two leather-seated
chairs). Breuer’s first tubular chair, the ‘Wassily’ chair, is an in-
genious combination of elements derived from Thonet and Riet-
veld. The curious side-pieces of canvas under the arm-pieces, for
instance, must come from the wooden side-pieces in Rietveld’s
1919 chair, or from the first version of the red-blue armchair as
illustrated in De Stij/ in 1919.

Film strip showing development of furniture designed by

Marcel Breuer at the Bauhaus
157
 Rudolf Schindler’s Lovell beach house at Newport Beach,
California, has sometimes been compared with Rietveld’s Schro-
der house. In fact Schindler's house is closer to the van Doesburg—
van Eesteren projects exhibited in Paris in 1923 with its long
horizontals of the balconies, assembling space in terms of loosely
enclosed volumes rather than of intersecting planes. Certainly
it merits comparison with the Schroder house, but when one
considers that it was designed as a beach house in an ideally warm
climate, its penetration of the interior by ‘outside’ spaces seems
less extraordinary in this context than Rietveld’s house which was
designed to be lived in all the time and to accommodate all the
changing needs of a family.
Whether Schindler was influenced by De Stijl is difficult to say.
Reyner Banham’s argument that ‘European architectural publica-
tions just didn’t reach California in those days (survivors of the
‘twenties can testify to this)’ isn’t very convincing. Schindler
trained as an architect in the Vienna of Loos, Wagner and Hoff-
mann, the Vienna that was the first to appreciate Mackintosh. After
he had gone to America (first to Chicago and then California) he
kept himself well-informed of what was going on in Europe. Ap-
parently sketches for the Lovell beach house have been found
dating back to 1923, which would accord with the house being
closer to the van Doesburg-van Eesteren projects. Although these
were not illustrated until 1924 in the De Stij/ magazine they were
probably reproduced in reports of the 1923 Paris exhibition. On the
other hand with his Austrian background and the example of
Wright (for whom Schindler worked in Chicago) and of Californian
architects like Irving Gill, he could have arrived at a similar point
with his beach house quite independently.

One should not take the statements of artists and architects too
literally. Although there is considerable stylistic unity in the work
of those artists associated with De Stijl there was also diversity and
strong individuality. The Bauhaus claimed to be an idea, not a
style, but nevertheless imposed a style on its designers, if not on
the painters. Both De Stijl and the Bauhaus must share some of
158
Rudolf Schindler Lovell beach house, Newport Beach,
California, 1925-6
159
the blame for the stale and meaningless geometry that has proli-
ferated in architecture all over the world, as well as share the credit
for the general improvement in product and graphic design.
However, the De Stijl conception emerges, in retrospect, as the
more imaginative. As the English architect, Brian Housden, has
written:

Bauhaus designers were very successful in getting tubular furni-

ture, ceramics, electrical fittings, and kitchen equipment into pro-
duction, and their designs were good by any standard. Unlike De
Stijl work, however, these designs were conceived within an
existing tradition, whose main characteristics were reductive.
Members of De Stijl, after reducing their designs, then used their
imaginations to create a new and exciting world; Bauhaus de-
signers left their work arid and impersonal. It is the imaginative
content of many of the products of De Stijl which makes our in-
terest in them more lasting. (Design, March 1968)

If De Stijl is partly responsible for the worst anonymities of the

international style in architecture this is mainly because of the
blind following today of the principles of forty or fifty years ago.
Throughout the fourteen years of De Stijl’s existence van Does-
burg was prepared to modify and change his ideas according
to the changing circumstances of the times which demanded new
thinking. Were he alive today he would nodoubt, as would
Lissitzky or Moholy-Nagy, be working in a totally different way
from the ‘twenties and ‘thirties, in a style suited to the needs of our
own age.
The statements issued in De Stij/ were often dogmatic and ag-
gressive. But the objects, buildings and paintings produced by
those associated with De Stijl speak otherwise. Mondrian loved
the city and hated the greenery of the countryside in his later years,
yet his paintings have a spiritual and mystical depth, an invitation
to meditation that is closer to eastern religious belief than to a naive
and optimistic faith in western technology. Van Doesburg’s
decorations for the Café Aubette (with those of Arp and Sophie
Tatiber-Arp) must have created an exhilarating and stimulating
environment that wonderfully conveyed the sense of being alive
in the twentieth century without becoming crudely mechanistic
or inhuman. Oud pioneered low-cost, standardized housing
160
Theo van Doesburg and Cornelis van Eesteren Design for a shopping
arcade and café (not executed)
From De Stij/ 1925

and yet his Café Unie and the little temporary manager's hut
were personal works of great subtlety and grace. Rietveld’s
Schréder house and furniture are statements about the nature of
space. Not a vague, abstract idea of space, but space as the rela-
tionship between human beings and the environment in which
we live.
161
fi
Rietveld’s zig-zag chair (1934) was his only wooden chair to have
been produced and sold in quantity. (It was made in series of
twenty during the ‘thirties.) Like the red-blue chair it embodies the
act of sitting as being active, not passive. But it is more dynamic
than the red-blue chair, closer to van Doesburg’s counter-com-
positions. The Z-chair is crouched likea cat, relaxed and yet tense
with the possibility of quick and decisive movement.
Rietveld wanted to make the chair in one piece, but the tech-
niques to do this were not available at the time. There are now
appearing one-piece chairs based on Rietveld’s Z-chair. This
book began with Rietveld’s red-blue chair as embodying the
most important principles of De Stijl. It can appropriately end
with his zig-zag chair which links De Stijl with our own time.

Gerrit Rietveld Zig-zag chair, 1934

163
Acknowledgements and Short Bibliography

| would like to thank the following people for their help: Bernard
Gay (who organized the De Stijl exhibition at the Camden Arts
Centre, London, in 1968) ; Brian Housden (whose fine collection
of Rietveld furniture is illustrated in colour on page 58); Mrs
T. Schroder-Schrader of the Schroder house, Utrecht; Mrs J.M.A.
Oud-Dinaux, the widow of J.J.P.Oud; and J.Leering, Director
of the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.
Anyone who writes on De Stijl will have to depend to a large
extent on H.L.C.Jaffés De Stijl 7917-1932 (Tiranti, London),
and | would like to acknowledge my debt to this and to thank
Professor Jaffé for generously allowing me to quote from some
of his translations from the Dutch.
Jaffé’s book is less concerned with De Stijl architecture than
with De Stijl painting (and with that of Mondrian in particular).
A good account of the development of De Stijl architecture and
its relationship to international developments is to be found in
Reyner Banham’s Theory and Design in the First Machine Age
(Architectural Press, London). Theodore Brown's Gerrit Rietveld:
Architect (Bruna & Zoon, Utrecht) is a model of what an archi-
tectural monograph should be and | should like to thank the
publishers for permission to quote from Brown’s translations of
Rietveld’s writings and for kindly allowing the reproduction here
of several illustrations.
The De Stijl magazine has recently been reprinted in its entirety
by Athenaeum, Amsterdam, Bert Bakker, The Hague and Polak
and Van Gennep, Amsterdam, who have kindly granted me
permission to reproduce several illustrations from De Stijl. A
final volume of translations of the Dutch text into English is to
follow.
Form magazine (85, Norwich Street, Cambridge) published
translations of articles on architecture from the De Stij/ magazine
in Form 5 (September 1967) ; and in Form 6 (December 1967) and
in Form 7 (March 1968) a complete index to the De Stij/ magazine.
Van Doesburg’s Bauhaus Book has been published in translation
as Principles of Neo-Plastic Art (Lund Humphries, London).
164
Vantongerloo’s Paintings, Sculptures, Reflections and Mondrian’s
Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art and other Essays are published by
George Wittenborn, New York. The standard work on Mondrian
is Michel Seuphor’s Piet Mondrian (Thames and Hudson,
London), which contains a classified catalogue of Mondrian’s
work. Alfred H.Barr’s useful pamphlet De Stij/ is published by the
Museum of Modern Art. A comprehensive bibliography is to be
found in Jaffé.

165
Index

Abstraction 87, 90, 91, 93, 99 Doesburg, Theo van 10-14, 24, 28, 30, 33, 34,
America 16, 22, 25, 57 36, 37, 38, 43, 44, 45, 48, 57, 60, 61, 63, 64,
Amsterdam 44, 45, 53, 56, 101, 116, 157 66, 68, 72, 73, 74, 80, 83, 85, 87, 93, 94, 97,
Amsterdam School 53, 54, 56, 90, 91 99-114, 119, 120, 121, 128, 134, 135, 148-
L'Architecture Vivante 60 58, 160, 164
Arp, Hans (Jean) 148, 150, 160 Domela, Cesar 84, 89
Arp, Sophie-Tatiber 150, 160 Dudok, W.M. 56
Art Nouveau 44, 53, 90, 91, 92 Dutch character 43
Asymmetry 66, 67, 96, 120, 155 Dutch housing legislation 43
Aubette, Café 72, 101, 105, 107, 150, 160 Dutch landscape 36
Austria 18, 20, 22, 84, 152, 158 Dutch neutrality (in First World War) 57, 60, 83

Badovici, Jean 60 Eenheid 28, 61

Balla, Giacomo 30 Eesteren, Cornelis van 84, 94, 101, 119, 121,
Banham, Reyner 38, 138, 165 152, 157, 158, 161
Barr, Alfred H. 74, 154, 166 England 16, 17, 18, 90
Bauhaus 84, 86, 114, 151-2, 154, 157, 158, Expressionism 53, 94, 151
160
Belgium 44, 57, 61 Fagus factory (Gropius) 78, 125
Berger, John 114 Form 165
Berlage, H.P. 10, 38, 44, 45, 46, 48, 53 Freud, Sigmund 21
Berlin 86, 87, 120 Fry, Maxwell 108
Berlin chair (Rietveld) 120, 128 Function 90, 91, 92, 94, 121, 125, 128
Blast (Wyndham Lewis) 85 Futurism 30, 33, 63, 94
Blavatsky, Madame 33
Bonset, I.K. (van Doesburg) 60, 148, 149 Gay, Bernard 165
Boogie-woogie paintings (Mondrian) 73 Germany 18, 38, 53, 56, 60, 84, 85, 90, 130
Breuer, Marcel 156, 157 Gill, Irving 155, 158
Brown, Theodore 151, 165 Godwin, E.W. 16, 17, 155
Buddhism 33 Graeff, Werner 84, 86
Buffet (Rietveld) 17, 26, 27, 28, 128 Green 67, 72, 93, 105, 160
Gropius, Walter 21, 56, 78, 125, 151, 154, 155
Café Unie (Oud) 14, 15, 134-5, 161
Calvinism 38, 43 Heartfield, John 85
Camini, Aldo (van Doesburg) 60 Hilversum town hall (Dudok) 56
Chiattone, Mario, 33 Hoff, Robert van t’ 25, 26, 27, 30, 57, 78, 80,
Chicago 21, 24, 25, 30, 78, 158 83, 92
Constructivism 60, 83, 87, 148, 151 Hook of Holland housing (Oud) 24, 140, 146
Corbusier, Le 123, 152 Housden, Brian 160, 165
Cow, The (Van Doesburg) 66, 72, 154 Huis ter Heide (Hoff) 25, 27, 78
Counter-compositions (van Doesburg) 8-9, Huszar, Vilmos 63, 83, 87
97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 163
Cubism 28, 29, 72, 80, 94 Itten, Johannes 151
Cuypers, M.P.J. 44
Jaffé, H.L.C. 36, 37, 38, 43, 63, 165, 166
Dadaism 60, 84, 85, 86, 87, 94, 95, 148-151 Japan 17, 28
Decoration (see Ornament)
De Stijl magazine 10-14, 36, 38, 48, 56, 57, Kandinsky, Wassily 33, 34, 114
61, 63, 72, 83, 84, 85, 86, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, Kiefhoek housing (Oud) 24, 140-6
95, 99, 128, 135, 138, 151, 157, 158, 160, Kiesler, Frederik 84, 152, 153
165 Klaarhamer, P.J. 49, 50, 51, 63
Deutscher Werkbund 18 Klerk, de Michel 53, 54, 56, 91
Deutscher Werkstatten 18 Knock-down furniture (Rietveld) 132, 133
Diagonal (in De Stijl) 30, 74, 95, 99, 101, 105 Kok, Antony 63, 83,148 |
Doesburg, Nellie van 149 Krafft-Ebing 21
166
Kramer, Piet 52, 56 Sant’Elia, Antonio 30, 32
Kupper, Emil Marie (van Doesburg) 60, 61 Scheepvaarthuis (Van der Mey) 54
Scheveningen 66, 80, 81
Leck, Bart van der 11, 14, 37, 48, 50, 51, 57, Schindler, Rudolf 158, 159
60, 63, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 80, 83 Schoenmaekers, Dr 37, 38, 90
Leering, J. 165 Schroder house (Rietveld) 26, 44, 91, 92,114,
Lewis, Wyndham 85 118-26, 128, 134, 138, 146, 152, 158, 161
Lissitzky, El 83, 84, 114, 148, 160 Schroder, Mrs (Truus Schroder-Schroder)
Loos, Adolf 20, 30, 158 116, 121, 123, 129, 165
Schwitters, Kurt 149
Machine, the 91, 92, 93 Science 90
Mackintosh, Charles Rennie 19, 20, 21, 158 Scriabin 33
Malevich, Kasimir 34, 35, 114 Seuphor, Michel 165
Marey, E.-J. 30 Severini, Gino 30
Marinetti 33, 63, 85 Socialism 48, 92, 93
Mass-production 18, 19, 91, 92 Space 7, 48, 66, 91,120-1, 126,127,128, 161
Mecano 148 Spinoza 37
Mendelsohn, Erik 21, 53, 56 Staal, J.F. 56
Meudon (van Doesburg’s studio) 106, 107 Standardization 18, 19, 44, 92, 130, 131,
Moholy-Nagy, Lazlo 85, 108, 114, 148, 151, 140ff, 160
160 Steiner house (Loos) 21
Mondrian, Piet 11, 14, 24, 28, 29, 30, 37, 38, Stijl (see De Stijl)
44, 57, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 72, 73, 74, 80, 83, Stravinsky, Igor 33
87, 91, 92, 93, 95-7, 114, 134, 160, 164, Style 10-14, 16, 38, 48, 86, 92, 138, 158
165 Sullivan, Louis 21, 22, 24, 25
Morris, W. 16, 18, 48, 92 Suprematism 34, 60
Muthesius, Hermann 18
Tagore, Rabrindranath 33
Neo-plasticism 90, 150 Theosophy 33
Neue Jugend 85 Thonet 18, 19, 157
New York 73, 93 Typography, the New 84, 85, 135
Tzara, Tristan 148
Ornament 20-1, 44, 90, 91
Oud, J.J.P. 11, 14, 24, 25, 30, 33, 44, 56, 63, Unity chapel (Wright) 78
80, 83, 91, 92, 130, 160, 164 Universal 91, 146
Oud-Dinaux, Mrs J.M.A. 165 Utrecht 25, 50, 60, 63, 78

Paris 28, 57, 83, 86, 93, 101, 107, 152, 158 Van Doesburg (see Doesburg)
Paul, Bruno 18 Van der Leck (see Leck)
Pevsner, Nikolaus 128 Van Eesteren (see Eesteren)
‘Plus and minus’ paintings (Mondrian) 66, 67 Van Nelle factory 55
Primary colour 67, 68, 72, 91, 96, 105, 128 Van t'Hoff (see Hoff)
Vantongerloo, Georges 57, 83, 93, 127, 166
Raphael, Max 114 Vienna 21, 158
Ray 90, 91 Villa Savoie (Corbusier) 123
Red-blue chair (Rietveld) 7, 14, 17, 27, 30, 70, ‘Vonk, De’ (Oud, Doesburg,) 74
73, 99, 120, 126, 128, 134, 157, 163 Vordemberge-Gildewart, Friedel 84, 88
Richter, Hans 84, 149, 150
Riemerschmid, Richard 18 ‘Wassily’ chair (Breuer) 156, 157
Rietveld, Gerrit 7, 11, 14, 17, 18, 26, 27, 30, 33, Weimar 86, 151
51, 60, 70, 73, 91, 92, 93, 99, 114-33, 134, Wils, Jan 25, 78, 83
138, 151, 157, 158, 161, 163, 164 Wright, Frank Lloyd 24, 25, 30, 53, 57, 78, 83
Robie House (Wright) 25 158
Rosenberg, Léonce 101, 119, 152, 157
Rotterdam 43-4, 56, 83, 134 Yeats, W.B. 33
Ruskin, John 92
Russia 34, 60, 84, 87 Zig-zag chair (Rietveld) 163

167
British churches by Edwin Smith and Olive Cook
Great modern architecture by Sherban Cantacuzino
European domestic architecture by Sherban Cantacuzino
Modern churches of the world
by Robert Maguire and Keith Murray ce
Ea
ee
ee
Modern houses of the world by Sherban Cantacuzino

African sculpture by William Fagg and Margaret Plass \

Florentine sculpture by Anthony Bertram .
Greek sculpture by John Barron
Indian sculpture by Philip Rawson
Modern sculpture by Alan Bowness .
Michelangelo by Anthony Bertram

Art deco by Bevis Hillier é

Art nouveau by Mario Amaya g
De Stijl by Paul Overy «Re
me
Pop art: object and image by Christopher Finch
The Bauhaus by Gillian Naylor
1000 years of drawing by Anthony Bertram
Modern graphics by Keith Murgatroyd

Arms and armour by Howard L. Blackmore ©Pi

The art of the garden by Miles Hadfield
Art in silver and gold by Gerald Taylor
Firearms by Howard L. Blackmore
Jewelry by Graham Hughes 4
Costume in pictures by Phillis Cunnington
Modern furniture by Ella Moody
Modern ceramics by Geoffrey Beard
Modern glass by Geoffrey Beard
Motoring history by L. T. C. Rolt
Railway history by C. Hamilton Ellis
Toys by Patrick Murray

Charlie Chaplin: early comedies by Isabel Quigly

The films of Alfred Hitchcock by George Perry
Greta Garbo by Raymond Durgnat and John Kobal e
Marlene Dietrich by John Kobal
Movie monsters by Denis Gifford
New cinema in Britain by Roger Manvell
New cinema in Europe by Roger Manvell
New cinema in the USA by Roger Manvell
The great funnies by David Robinson
The silent cinema by Liam O’Leary
168
 es =
meVa raaie
+ \