De style

The founders include the artists Theo van Dusburg , Pete Mondrian , Bart van der Lek , architects Jacobs Johannes Aud , Jan Wils and Robert van 't Hoff , sculptor Georges Vantongerlo and poet Anthony Kock . Later they were joined by Gino Severini , Jean Arp , Gerrit Rietveld , El Lissitzky , Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildevart , Cazar Domela Newvengeis and Konstantin Brancusi .

From 1917 to 1931, the group published De Stijl magazine, which consistently published its aesthetic program. Its main feature was the installation of a radical renewal of art to its very foundations by changing a person from the inside and his living conditions outside. The artist should not be locked in his work and work in isolation in his studio, but as a technical specialist, he should specifically attack contemporary social and economic conditions of life in order to update them. The work of art must first of all have a rational-utilitarian accent and be developed soberly, clearly and energetically, in the "engineering purity and concreteness" of its purpose and economic function. At the same time, the dogmatically proclaimed main elements of the painting were: a right angle and three colors, red, yellow and blue , to which black and white could be added as additional or background ones.

When these principles were applied in architecture and design, a generally functional rule was revealed: the building was expressed as a plastic image, as if rising above the ground. The aesthetic and philosophical purism of the Style group had a huge impact on the architecture of the 20th century, and above all through the Bauhaus , where Theo van Dusburg taught in 1921-1923. It was especially pronounced in the works of Walter Gropius , Mies van der Rohe , Le Corbusier , Erich Mendelssohn , Bruno Taut .

• De Stijl