Piet Zwart and De Stijl

Chronologically following the Art Deco movement, De Stijl was a very much a reactionary movement to the ‘excess’ of the Art Deco and relatively the Art Nouveau movements respectively. Geographically starting in the Netherlands, De Stijl was led by artists such as Theo Van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. De Stijl being a somewhat reactionary movement, their design principles was highly influenced by what they discouraged from Art Deco. They were against the highly decorative nature of Art Deco and hence reduced their work to basic principles of aesthetics. 

Contextually, De Stijl emerged in a post-World War I setting, and as such had a focus on rebuilding society a new with a new ‘visual Language’. This idea of a visual language was a key theme that is seen throughout the movement and the various artists and designers. By using a visual language, the goal was to achieve an aesthetic that anyone from any culture would be able to appreciate. To achieve this, the artists and designers reduced the style to the key concepts of aesthetics which meant that anyone could appreciate it since the work consisted of purely geometric shapes with block primary colours that anyone would be familiar with.  These principles are highlighted perfectly in the work of Piet Mondrian. His work was composed of primary colours and geometric shapes exclusively. 

Moving along to the Graphic Design side of things, De Stijl was also relevant to this corner of the creative arts. Piet Zwart was a Dutch designer that had work relevant to this movement. Taking this work of his as an example, we can see how these principles of De Stijl that we discussed from a fine art perspective have been used in the design world. In this work here we can see a clear attempt to use a very bare minimal aesthetic. The work is composed of purely strong geometric shapes. Along with this use of geometric shapes we can see a very simplistic use of colour. The colours we see here seem to be translucent block colours placed over each other at various sections to create darker tones. Something that is also typical to the De Stijl style is the sense of balance and structure in the work. With these two works we can see that with the use of strong straight lines the works achieve a sense of linear balance that is something that is seen throughout the De Stijl movement.

When looking to contemporary work, we can very often see the influences of De Stijl. In this work over here we can see some of the major characteristics of De Stijl present in the work. The use of somewhat block colour and highly reduced geometric shapes. Something that is specific to Piet Zwart’s design is also present in this contemporary example and that is the overlapping of shapes and colours to create a middle colour in between.

As a personal note, De Stijl is not really a movement I was too fond of purely due to the aesthetic of the work.  While the ‘minimal’ approach to work does fascinate me and the aesthetic is generally pleasing, the pure use of primary colours or a variation of them seems a bit too limiting for my tastes.

References:

·         Arthistory-arthistory.org-2014[ http://www.theartstory.org/movement-de-stijl.htm][Last accessed on 23/01/2015]