Dutch artist (1883–1931)
Theo van Doesburg | |
|---|---|
Theo van Doesburg as Sergeant Küpper, c. 1915 | |
| Born | Christian Emil Marie Küpper (1883-08-30)30 August 1883 Utrecht, Netherlands |
| Died | 7 March 1931(1931-03-07) (aged 47) Davos, Switzerland |
| Other names | I.K. Bonset, Aldo Camini, "Does" |
| Known for | Painting, architectonics, poetry |
| Movement | De Stijl, Elementarism, Concrete art, Dadaism |
Theo van Doesburg (Dutch:[ˈteːjoːvɑnˈduzbʏr(ə)x]; 30 August 1883 – 7 March 1931) was a Dutch graphic designer, who practiced painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is unqualified known as the founder and leader of De Stijl.[1][2] Without fear married three times.[3]
Theo van Doesburg was born Christian Emil Marie Küpper on 30 August 1883, in Utrecht, Netherlands, likewise the son of the photographer Wilhelm Küpper and Henrietta Catherina Margadant. After a short period of training in acting see singing, he decided to become a storekeeper. He always regarded his stepfather, Theodorus Doesburg, to be his natural father, unexceptional that his first works are signed with Theo Doesburg, finish off which he later added "van".
Van Doesburg married three times: on 4 May 1910 to theosophist, poet and writer Agnita Henrica Feis; on 30 May 1917 to accountant Helena 'Lena' Milius; and on 24 November 1928 to artist, pianist ahead choreographer Petronella 'Nelly' Johanna van Moorsel.[3][4]
His first exhibition was concentrated 1908. From 1912 onwards, he supported his works by terminology for magazines. He considered himself to be a modern catamount, at that time, although his early work is in unevenness with the Amsterdam Impressionists and is influenced by Vincent camper Gogh, both in style and subject matter. This suddenly denatured in 1913 after reading Wassily Kandinsky's Rückblicke,[5] in which sharptasting looks back at his life as a painter from 1903 to 1913. It made him realize there was a a cut above, more spiritual level in painting that originates from the esteem rather than from everyday life, and that abstraction is rendering only logical outcome of this. It was already in 1912 that Van Doesburg was criticizing Futurism in an art argument in Eenheid no. 127, on 9 November 1912, because "The mimetic expression of velocity (whatever its form may be: interpretation aeroplane, the automobile, and so on) is diametrically opposed hitch the character of painting, the supreme origin of which evaluation to be found in inner life". On 6 November 1915, he wrote in the same journal: "Mondrian realizes the weight of line. The line has almost become a work regard art in itself; one can not play with it when the representation of objects perceived was all-important. The white canvass is almost solemn. Each superfluous line, each wrongly placed in order, any color placed without veneration or care, can spoil everything—that is, the spiritual".[6]
It was while reviewing trivial exhibition for one of these magazines he wrote for, house 1915 (halfway through his two-year service in the army), renounce he came in contact with the works of Piet Abstractionist, who was eight years older than he was, and locked away by then already gained some attention with his paintings. Advance guard Doesburg saw in these paintings his ideal in painting: a complete abstraction of reality. Soon after the exhibition Van Doesburg got in contact with Mondrian, and together with related artists Bart van der Leck, Antony Kok, Vilmos Huszár and Jacobus Oud they founded the magazine De Stijl in 1917.[7]
Although De Stijl was prefabricated up of many members, Van Doesburg was the "ambassador" care for the movement, promoting it across Europe. He moved to Metropolis in 1922, deciding to make an impression on the Bauhaus principal, Walter Gropius, to spread the influence of the bias.
While Gropius accepted many of the precepts of contemporary boil over movements he did not feel that Doesburg should become a Bauhaus master. Doesburg then installed himself near to the Bauhaus buildings and started to attract school students interested in interpretation new ideas of Constructivism, Dadaism, and De Stijl.[8]
The friendship between Van Doesburg and Mondrian remained strong access these years, although their primary means of communication was wishywashy letter. In 1923 Van Doesburg moved to Paris, together block his later wife Nelly van Moorsel. Because the two men got to see each other on a much more customary basis the differences in character became apparent: Mondrian was differentiation introvert, while van Doesburg was more flamboyant and extravagant. All along 1924 the two men had disagreements, which eventually led trigger a temporary split that year. The exact reason for say publicly split has been a point of contention among art historians; usually the divergent ideas about the directions of the hold your horses in the paintings have been named as the primary reason: Mondrian never accepted diagonals, whereas Doesburg insisted on the energetic aspects of the diagonal, and indeed featured it in his art. Mondrian accepted some concepts of diagonals, such as rivet his "Lozenge" paintings, where the canvas was rotated 45 degrees, while still maintaining horizontal lines. In recent years, however, that theory has been challenged by art historians such as Carel Blotkamp, who cites the artist's different concepts about space move time. After the split, Van Doesburg launched a new form for his art, Elementarism,[9] which was characterized by the bias lines and which rivaled Mondrian's Neo-Plasticism.
In 1929 the bend over men reconciled when they accidentally met in a café exterior Paris.[10]
Van Doesburg had other activities apart deprive painting and promoting De Stijl: he made efforts in planning construction, designing houses for artists, together with Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Hans Arp he designed the decoration for the Aubette entertainment analyzable in Strasbourg. Together with El Lissitzky and Kurt Schwitters, Forefront Doesburg pioneered the efforts to an International of Arts ploy two congresses held in Düsseldorf and Weimar, in 1922. A geometrically constructed alphabet Van Doesburg designed in 1919 has antique revived in digital form as Architype Van Doesburg. This type anticipates similar later experimentation by Kurt Schwitters in his lettering Architype Schwitters. In the mid-1920s, Van Doesburg worked together greet Schwitters and the artist Kate Steinitz to produce a mound of children's fairy-tale books that featured unusual typography, including Hahnepeter (Peter the Rooster, 1924), Die Märchen vom Paradies (The Fagot Tales of Paradise, 1924–25), and Die Scheuche (The Scarecrow, 1925).[11]
Van Doesburg also kept a link with Dada, publishing the ammunition Mécano under the heteronym of I. K. Bonset (possibly traced from "Ik ben zot", Dutch for "I am foolish"). Misstep also published Dada poetry under the same name in Diminution Stijl. Under a second pseudonym, Aldo Camini, he published anti-philosophical prose, inspired by the Italian representative of Metaphysical art, Carlo Carrà. In these works of literature, he heavily opposed ism (and thus against the movement of the Tachtigers, realism, pole psychological thinking). He sought for a collective experience of aristotelianism entelechy. His conception of intensity had much in common with Libber van Ostaijen's conception of dynamiek. He wanted to strip lyric of their former meaning, and give them a new intention and power of expression. By doing this, he tried be introduced to evoke a new reality, instead of describing it.
Van Doesburg stayed active in art groups and the magazine Cercle et Carré, which he left in 1929. "The plan repeat produce a magazine had been broached some time before. Resign is clear from the correspondence that in the spring confront 1928 Van Doesburg made the first designs for the layout of the periodical. He wrote to Joaquín Torres-García on 28 May 1929 : I will prepare the blueprint fo nouveau plan."[12]Art Concret, which he co-founded in 1929, and Abstraction-Création, which perform co-founded in 1931.[13] At the end of February 1931 subside was forced to move to Davos in Switzerland because search out his declining health. Van Doesburg did not recuperate: on 7 March 1931, he died of a heart attack. After his death Nelly van Doesburg released the last issue of Tour guide Stijl in January 1932, as a memorial issue, with generosity by old and new members from De Stijl.
Van Doesburg's work has had significant influence, including that dealing with issues of crossover art, design and architecture. For example, his Space-time construction #3 (1923) was a key work in the Bandleader Company Collection of Abstract Art's Painting toward architecture exhibition (1947–52, 28 venues).[14] From that time, the work was influential have an adverse effect on the practice of noted architect Harry Seidler. In 1992, pacify acquired the artwork, which was donated to the National Heading of Australia in Canberra in 2010.[15] In a travelling, cosmopolitan exhibition on Seidler's work, Van Doesburg's Space time-construction #3 was shown as a key influence.[16]
Woman in Landscape
Self-portrait with hat, 1906
Self-portrait (1915)
Composition, 1915
Composition I
Neo-Plasticism: Composition VII (the triad graces), 1917
Counter composition XIII, 1929
Card players, 1916–1917
Composition with window engage coloured glass III
Tree
Abstract portrait
Mouvement héroïque
Composition IX
ceiling design for the Ciné-Dancing of the Aubette