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WP_152/ 2008
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Works on paper: Paintings 2 | | Medium: | acrylic on paper | | Size (inches): | 11.7 x 8.3 | | Size (mm): | 297 x 210 | | Catalog #: | WP_0152 | | Description: | Signed, date and copyright in pencil on the reverse.
Concrete art -
Concrete art and design or concretism is an abstractionist movement that evolved in the 1930's out of the work of De Stijl, the futurists and Kandinsky around the Swiss painter Max Bill. The term "concrete art" was first introduced by Theo van Doesburg in his "Manifesto of Concrete Art" (1930). In his understanding, this form of abstractionism must be free of any symbolical association with reality, arguing that lines and colors are concrete by themselves.
Max Bill further promoted this idea, organizing the first international exhibition in 1944. The movement came to fruition in Northern Italy and France in the 1940's and 1950's through the work of the groups Movimento d'arte concreta (MAC) and Espace.
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_art
Theo van Doesburg -
Theo van Doesburg (Utrecht, August 30, 1883 – Davos, March 7, 1931) was a Dutch artist, practicing in painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl.
Biography:
Early life
Theo van Doesburg was born as Christian Emil Marie Küpper on August 30 1883 in Utrecht as the son of the photographer Wilhelm Küpper and Henrietta Catherina Margadant. After a short training in acting and singing he decided to become a painter. He always regarded his stepfather, Theodorus Doesburg, to be his natural father, so that his first works are signed with Theo Doesburg, to which he later added the insertion "van". His first exhibition was in 1908. He supported his works by copying paintings from the Rijksmuseum[citation needed] and, from 1912 onwards, writing for magazines. Although he considered himself to be a modern painter at that time, his early work is in line with the Amsterdam Impressionists and is influenced by Vincent van Gogh, both in style and subject matter. This suddenly changed in 1913 after reading Wassily Kandinsky's Rückblicke, in which he looks back at his life as a painter from 1903-1913. It made him realize there was a higher, more spiritual level in painting that originates from the mind rather than from everyday life, and that abstraction is the only logical outcome of this.
The De Stijl movement
It was while reviewing an exposition for one of these magazines he wrote for, in 1915 (halfway through his two-year service in the army), that he came in contact with the works of Piet Mondrian, who was eight years older than him, and had by then already gained some attention with his paintings. Van Doesburg saw in these paintings his ideal in painting: a complete abstraction of reality. Soon after the exposition Van Doesburg got in contact with Mondrian, and together with related artists Bart van der Leck, Anthony Kok, Vilmos Huszar and J.J.P. Oud they founded the magazine De Stijl in 1917.
Promoting De Stijl
Although 'De Stijl' was made up of many members, Van Doesburg was the 'ambassador' of the movement, promoting it across Europe. He moved to Weimar in 1922, deciding to make an impression on the Bauhaus principal, Walter Gropius, in order to spread the influence of the movement.
While Gropius accepted many of the precepts of contemporary art movements he did not feel that Doesburg should become a Bauhaus master. Doesburg then installed himself near to the Bauhaus buildings and started to attract school students interested in the new ideas of Constructivism. Dadaism, and De Stijl.
The split with Mondrian
The friendship between Van Doesburg and Mondrian remained strong in these years, although their primary way of communication was by letter. In 1923 Van Doesburg moved to Paris together with his later wife Nelly van Moorsel. Because the two men got to see each other on a much more regular basis the differences in character became apparent: Mondrian was introvert, while van Doesburg was more flamboyant and extravagant. During 1924 the two men had disagreements, which eventually lead to a (temporary) split in the same year. The exact reason of this split has been a point among art historians; usually the divergent ideas about the directions of the lines in the paintings have been named as the primary reason: Mondrian never accepted diagonals, whereas Doesburg insisted on the diagonal's dynamic aspects, and indeed featured it in his art. However, Mondrian accepted some concepts of diagonals, such as in his "Lozenge" paintings, where the canvas was rotated 45 degrees, while still maintaining horizontal lines. In recent years, however, this theory gained critique from art historians such as Carel Blotkamp, who cites their different concepts about space and time as the main reason for the split. After the split Van Doesburg launched a new concept for his art: Elementarism, which was characterized by the diagonal lines and rivaled with Mondrian's Neo-Plasticism.
In 1929 the two men became reconciled when they accidentally met in a café in Paris.
Van Doesburg had other activities apart from painting and promoting De Stijl: he made efforts in architecture, designing houses for artists, together with Georges Vantongerloo and he designed the decoration for the Café Aubette in Strasbourg. Together with El Lissitzky and Kurt Schwitters, Van Doesburg pioneered the efforts to an International of Arts in two congresses held in Düsseldorf and Weimar, in 1922. A geometrically constructed alphabet Van Doesburg designed in 1919 has been revived in digital form as Architype Van Doesburg. This typeface anticipates similar later experimentation by Kurt Schwitters in his typeface Architype Schwitters.
Van Doesburg also kept a link with DADA, publishing the magazine Mécano under the heteronym of I. K. Bonset (possibly an anagram of "Ik ben zot", Dutch for "I am foolish"). He also published Dada poetry under the same name in De Stijl. Under a second pseudonym, Aldo Camini, he published anti-philosophical prose, inspired by the Italian representative of Metaphysical art, Carlo Carrŕ. In these works of literature, he heavily opposed individualism (and thus against the movement of the Tachtigers, realism, and psychological thinking. He sought for a collective experience of reality. His conception of intensity had much in common with Paul van Ostaijen's conception of "dynamiek". He wanted to strip words of their former meaning, and give them a new meaning and power of expression. By doing this, he tried to evoke a new reality, instead of describing it.
Last years
Van Doesburg stayed active in art groups such as Cercle et Carré, Art Concret and Abstraction-Création, which he founded in 1931. At the end of February 1931 he was forced to move to Davos in Switzerland because of his declining health. Van Doesburg did not recuperate: on March 7, 1931 he died of a heart attack. After his death Nelly van Doesburg released the last issue of De Stijl as a memorial issue with contributions by old and new members from De Stijl.
Bibliography:
* Baljeu, Joos. Theo van Doesburg. Studio Vista: 1974, ISBN 0-289-70358-1.
* Hoek, Els, Marleen Blokhuis, Ingrid Goovaerts, Natalie Kamphuys, et al. Theo Van Doesburg: Oeuvre Catalogus. Centraal Museum: 2000. ISBN 90-6868-255-5.
* Overy, Paul. De Stijl. Studio Vista: 1969. ISBN 0-289-79622-9.
* White, Michael: De Stijl and Dutch modernism. Manchester University Press: 2003. ISBN 0-7190-6162-8.
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theo_van_Doesburg
De Stijl -
De Stijl (in English, generally pronounced /də ˈstaɪl/, after style; from the Dutch for "The Style" — pronounced [də ˈstɛɪl]), also known as neoplasticism, was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917. In a narrower sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 founded in the Netherlands.[1][2] De Stijl is also the name of a journal that was published by the Dutch painter, designer, writer, and critic Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931), propagating the group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), Vilmos Huszŕr (1884–1960), and Bart van der Leck (1876–1958), and the architects Gerrit Rietveld (1888–1964), Robert van 't Hoff (1887–1979), and J.J.P. Oud (1890–1963). The artistic philosophy that formed a basis for the group's work is known as neoplasticism — the new plastic art (or Nieuwe Beelding in Dutch).
Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colors along with black and white. Indeed, according to the Tate Gallery's online article on neoplasticism, Mondrian himself sets forth these delimitations in his essay 'Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art'. He writes, "... this new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and colour. On the contrary, it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and colour, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary colour." The Tate article further summarizes that this art allows "only primary colours and non-colours, only squares and rectangles, only straight and horizontal or vertical line." [1] The Guggenheim Museum's online article on De Stijl summarizes these traits in similar terms: "It [De Stijl] was posited on the fundamental principle of the geometry of the straight line, the square, and the rectangle, combined with a strong asymmetricality; the predominant use of pure primary colors with black and white; and the relationship between positive and negative elements in an arrangement of non-objective forms and lines." [2]
Principles and influences:
The name De Stijl is supposedly derived from Gottfried Semper's Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten oder Praktische Ästhetik (1861–3), which Curl[2] suggests was mistakenly believed to advocate Materialism and Functionalism. In general, De Stijl proposed ultimate simplicity and abstraction, both in architecture and painting, by using only straight horizontal and vertical lines and rectangular forms. Furthermore, their formal vocabulary was limited to the primary colours, red, yellow, and blue, and the three primary values, black, white, and grey. The works avoided symmetry and attained aesthetic balance by the use of opposition. This element of the movement embodies the second meaning of stijl: “a post, jamb or support”; this is best exemplified by the construction of crossing joints, most commonly seen in carpentry.
List of neoplasticists:
This list is not exhaustive. Because of the loose associations many artists had with De Stijl, it is difficult to get a complete overview of contributors.
* Max Bill (1908–1994), architect and designer.
* Ilya Bolotowsky (1907–1981), painter.
* Burgoyne Diller (1906–1965), painter.
* Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931), painter, designer, and writer; published De Stijl, 1917–1931.
* Cornelis van Eesteren (1897–1981), architect.
* Jean Gorin (1899–1981), painter.
* Robert van 't Hoff (1887–1979), architect.
* Vilmos Huszŕr (1884–1960), painter.
* Anthony Kok (1882–1969), poet.
* Bart van der Leck (1876–1958), painter.
* Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), painter.
* Marlow Moss (1890–1958), painter and sculptor.
* J.J.P. Oud (1890–1963), architect.
* Amédée Ozenfant (1886–1966), painter.
* Gerrit Rietveld (1888–1964), architect and designer.
* Georges Vantongerloo (1886–1965), sculptor.
* Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart,[1] painter.
* Jan Wils (1891–1972), architect.
In many of the group's three-dimensional works, vertical and horizontal lines are positioned in layers or planes that do not intersect, thereby allowing each element to exist independently and unobstructed by other elements. This feature can be found in the Rietveld Schröder House and the Red and Blue Chair.
De Stijl movement was influenced by Cubist painting as well as by the mysticism and the ideas about "ideal" geometric forms (such as the "perfect straight line") in the neoplatonic philosophy of mathematician M.H.J. Schoenmaekers. The works of De Stijl would influence the Bauhaus style and the international style of architecture as well as clothing and interior design. However, it did not follow the general guidelines of an “ism” (Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism), nor did it adhere to the principles of art schools like Bauhaus; it was a collective project, a joint enterprise.
In music, De Stijl was an influence only on the work of composer Jakob van Domselaer, a close friend of Mondrian. Between 1913 and 1916, he composed his Proeven van Stijlkunst (Experiments in Artistic Style), inspired mainly by Mondrian's paintings. This minimalistic—and, at the time, revolutionary—music defined "horizontal" and "vertical" musical elements and aimed at balancing those two principles. Van Domselaer was relatively unknown in his lifetime, and did not play a significant role within the De Stijl group.
References:
Notes
1. ^ a b "De Stijl". Tate Glossary. The Tate. Retrieved on 2006-07-31.
2. ^ a b Curl, James Stevens (2006). A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (Paperback), Second Edition, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860678-8.
Bibliography
* "De Stijl Architecture". Design Arts. Art and Culture. Retrieved on 2006-07-31.
* van Doesburg, Theo (1924). "Towards a plastic architecture". Translation of original published in De Stijl, XII, 6/7. Architecture & CAAD. Retrieved on 2006-07-31.
Further reading:
* Blotkamp, Carel (ed.) (1982). De beginjaren van De Stijl 1917–1922. Utrecht: Reflex.
* Blotkamp, Carel (ed.) (1996). De vervolgjaren van De Stijl 1922–1932. Amsterdam: Veen.
* Jaffé, H. L. C. (1956). De Stijl, 1917–1931, The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, 1st edition, Amsterdam: J.M. Meulenhoff.
* Overy, Paul (1969). De Stijl, 1st edition, London: Studio Vista.
* White, Michael (2003). De Stijl and Dutch Modernism. Manchester [etc]: Manchester University Press.
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Stijl
Jakob van Domselaer -
Jakob van Domselaer (b. Nijkerk, Netherlands, April 15, 1890; d. Bergen, Netherlands, January 5, 1960) was a Dutch composer.
In 1912, Van Domselaer traveled to Paris where he met the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), eventually becoming a part of Mondrian's artistic circle known as "De Stijl." Van Domselaer's piano suite Proeven van Stijlkunst (Experiments in Artistic Style, 1913-17) represented the first attempt to apply principles of Neo-Plasticism to music. This austere, mathematically based music represents an important but as yet unacknowledged precedent to minimalism and has been little performed or recorded.
Van Domselaer's students have included the Dutch composers Nico Schuyt (1922-1992) and Simeon ten Holt (b. 1923).
At the Berlage Concourse in 1988, the Dutch pianist Kees Wieringa was one of the prize winners, playing piano music by Van Domselaer. He has released several recordings featuring the music of Van Domselaer.
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_van_Domselaer
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