The Netherlands-based De Stijl movement, which was around from 1917 until 1931, embraced a metaphysical, pared-down beauty centred in basic visual elements such as geometric forms and primary colours. This movement was partly a reaction against the embellishing excesses of Art Deco. “De Stijl” which translates to “The Style” from Dutch, surfaced largely in retalliation to the terrors of World War I and the wish to remake society in its by-product. The members of De Stijl embraced a unworldly vision of art and its transformative capability. De Stijl artists adopted a visual language of precisely rendered geometric forms – which were straight lines, four cornered shapes and lastly primary colours. (The Art Story, n.d.)

OLD:

Composition A (1920)

Artist: Piet Mondrian

Artwork description & Analysis: Composition A - whose title announces its nonobjective nature by making no reference to anything beyond itself - is a good example of Mondrian's geometric abstraction before it fully matured within the framework of the De Stijl aesthetic. With its rectilinear forms made up of solid, outlined areas of color, the work reflects the artist's experimentation with Schoenmaekers's mathematical theory and his search for a pared-down visual language appropriate to the modern era. While here Mondrian uses blacks and shades of grey, his paintings would later be further reduced, ultimately employing more basic compositions and only solid blocks of primary colors.

Oil on canvas - The National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rome

New: 1994

The Art Story. (n.d.). De Stijl Movement Overview. [online] Available at: https://www.theartstory.org/movement/de-stijl/ [Accessed 18 Oct. 2019].