Piet Mondrian, Composition C, 1935, Oil on Canvas, 60 cm x 61 cm.
De Stijl means ‘The Style’ in Dutch, also known as Neo-Plasticism, was Dutch artistic movement founded in Leiden, 1917. Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg as well as Gerrit Rietveld are the most popular person in this art movement. Furthermore, the term of De Stijl is used to describe to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 founded in Netherlands. It promoted a style of art which contain of only the most fundamental of design element which are vertical and horizontal lines, primary colors (Red, Blue and Yellow) and primary value (White, Black and Grey).
The De Stijl’s artists think there was an aesthetics way to deal with function, line and specific colours. Historicism is the major concept emphasize by De Stjil, where past and present of everything happened are evidences of everyday life and happening. Other than that, it also emphasizes on essentialism or elementarisation whereby essence of the core is the main art compared with using other non-objective elements. Also, De stjil concept was also pointing out that all elements must be balanced and equal.
In De Stjil artwork creations, it always carries some expression. For instance, mathematical structure way of expression in terms of presenting the beauty of pure geometry. The harmony of nature brings out the pure abstraction and reduce everything down to its essential form. De Stjil is a purify art which meaning that those artworks could having banning or focusing of approach. For banning, it is a naturalistic representation that having symmetric design and showing some external values of subjective expressions. On the other way, at focusing approach, it is a spiritual & intellectual climate in presenting the artworks. It showing its emotions or expression in the artworks created. All the concepts by De Stjil has collaborated with other artists especially architecture. It is clearly to see that those artists which are followers of De Stjil, their artworks contained of shadow of De Stjil art concept.
Theo van Doesburg, Contra-Composition of Dissonances, XVI, 1925, Oil paint, 1 m x 1.8 m.
Mondrian & Van Doesburg artists which emphasize on physical nature (elementarism), their artworks portrayed De Stjil art movement. Piet Mondrian create his artwork using horizontal & vertical method because he suggested pure abstraction and flat colour shape as he wants to overcome the senseof 3-dimension in the painting, he also thinks that diagonal was suggested deep space or 3-dimensional while Theo Van Doesburg has diagonal concept in his artwork because he wants a dynamic quality of potential movement.
The key visual characteristic of De Stijl is they formed by precise geometric forms of flat square and rectangle. Besides, De Stijl always constructed with very strict asymmetrical composition or design. Artist of De Stijl only applied pure primary colour (Red, Blue and Yellow) and primary value (White, Black and Grey) in their artwork. Furthermore, De Stijl is characterized by right angles via combination of horizontal line, and vertical line. Not only that, combination of thick and thin planar lines or strips is applied in De Stijl artwork to separate between the color square and rectangle shapes in the painting. De Stijl is a non-objective art and designed according to golden rule. In this movement, combination of vertical, horizontal line with diagonal construction applied as well because it can create dynamism in the artwork.
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