“Are the clean, organised, minimalist approaches of De Stijl a reaction against the blood, filth, destruction and chaos of war?”
De Stijl, also called “Neoplasticism” was a Dutch art movement that occurred during the start of the 20th century. Translated into English, “De Stijl” means “The Style”. It was considered a social and a political movement due to its time, the era of the first world war. It began with Theo Van Doesburg and after meeting Piet Mondrian bonded over their love and passion for abstraction. As the world, around them became a world of absolute chaos, Theo and Piet decided to create pieces that showed the rational consciousness of the world into visual forms. It is this idea of pure abstraction that ultimately changed the ways of art and its relations to the world that it was created in.
Pure Abstraction expands with several other styles of art but they all have a similar intention. These styles wanted to translate into visual terms the world around them to expose the hidden structure of …show more content…
This is a huge contrast to the world that was currently changing, war is messy and destructive often seems to have no structure or plan to it, it’s just pure chaos. With this art and its use of white space and bold lines, we can see that it is a reaction against the madness of the war. It reflects on the question of why people are fighting? Why is it that people have differences and conflicts? We are all humans that live in the same world. Mondrian’s work is to remind people and almost unite people with his message of understanding. It is this social and political art style that reminds society that we must all strip away the mist of war and destruction and set aside the conflicts with others to truly understand