INTRODUCTION TO DE STIJL

Dutch for The Style (pronounced the same), De Stijl was the name of a group of artists and architects who gathered around the largely theoretical architect Theo van Doesburg. He founded the group in Leyden in 1917 and published the magazine De Stijl, which ran from 1917 to 1928. During the tumultuous decade following World War I, De Stijl artists set out to create a universal style in painting, architecture and design, using rectangles and squares in flat planes of bold primary colors and black, gray and white, all carefully orchestrated with straight lines. The compelling geometric paintings of Piet Mondrian and equally striking furniture of Gerrit Rietveld have become oft-quoted classics of 20th-century design.