The Colour and the Shape

Piet Mondrian’s grid-like Composition series; Gerrit Rietveld’s blocky Red and Blue Chair; Vilmos Huszár’s robotic Mechano-Dancer. All are symbols of De Stijl, the early 20^th century movement that attempted to reduce art and design to their bare essentials: color, shape and composition. The man behind De Stijl was Theo van Doesburg, who not only founded the collective but organized the first De Stijl exhibition, created its namesake publication and produced an array of wonderfully pure, geometric paintings in the process. Lesser known than his contemporary Mondrian (a particular favorite of Yves Saint Laurent), Van Doesburg gets his moment in the spotlight this month thanks to a major exhibition at London’s Tate Modern.