What was De Stijl? This fascinating survey, the most comprehensive book to be published on the subject, seeks to unravel that question and to consider how the theory of De Stijl (Dutch for "The Style") matched its actual practice. There are various answers: De Stijl was a magazine; De Stijl was an art movement; and De Stijl was an idea, a world view, and an approach to life. And from the 1930s onwards, De Stijl was recognized internationally as the most important contribution to modern culture made by The Netherlands. It is associated with such instantly recognizable objects as the radical geometric abstract paintings of Piet Mondrian, with their perpendicular relationships and primary colors; the dynamic architectural drawings of Theo van Doesburg, which explode the conventional box-like structure of a building and show it as interpenetrating spaces unfolding in time; and the experimental furniture of Gerrit Rietveld, who took the most familiar of objects, the armchair, and reconfigured it as a series of self-supporting planks and struts. In each case, the artists, architects and designers seem to have had a common aspiration to work together to forge a new cultural consensus and "style" for the modern age. In The Story of De Stijl, which draws extensively on original sources, the authors challenge the understanding of De Stijl as a coherent movement, presenting a series of "scenes" focused on crucial turning points in the history of De Stijl and bringing to the foreground the key relationships and interactions that brought De Stijl to life. It is profusely illustrated with a range of images, many previously unseen, from artworks and buildings to photographs, letters, and documents, that, along with anecdotes, articles, and even footnotes combine to convey the texture of the world De Stijl emerged from. This accessible yet authoritative account is set to become the standard reference work on an important and fascinating modern movement.

The Story of De Stijl

Arts & Photography

Janssen, Hans

WHITE,MICHAEL

History & Criticism

Harry N. Abrams

The Story of de Stijl: Mondrian to Van Doesburg. Hans Janssen and Michael White

Ben Uri Gallery & Museum

Mondrian and Cubism /anglais

Acc Art Books

Review\nThe author uses his own research; previously unknown letters, writings, and archival materials; and the work of other scholars to explore the life of this pivotal artist. -- Liz Hartman ― Publishers Weekly\nStyle for him, from first to last, served a quest to manifest soul-deep spirituality as a demonstrable fact of life. His aim, he said, was not to create masterpieces, though he did that, too. It was 'to find things out.' He reduced painting’s uses and procedures, the whats and the hows, to a rock-bottom why. -- Peter Schjeldahl ― New Yorker\n[Demonstrates] an extraordinary feel for the paintings and an uncanny sense of Mondrian’s inner self. -- Maxwell Carter ― Wall Street Journal: WSJ.\nA fascinating study of an artist so obsessed with his life’s work that he would let nothing and no one get in its way. -- Tobias Grey ― Airmail\n“Janssen’s biography of the Dutch master is riveting and eloquent.” –Terence Trouillot, Artnet 
Piet Mondrian: A Life is the first comprehensive biography of Piet Mondrian to be published in English. This remarkable book provides a long-overdue and compelling account of the life of perhaps the most influential abstract artist of the 20th century. Hans Janssen, former chief curator at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, draws on his own research and that of a cohort of distinguished scholars, as well as previously unknown letters, writings and archival materials, to reveal unexpected new insights into the artist’s life and the circles in which Mondrian moved. 
From his student days in Amsterdam to his life in Paris after the First World War, to his time in London and New York from 1938 until his death, Mondrian is here presented as someone in constant interaction with the world around him. Far from a lonely, isolated figure as he is often portrayed, he is revealed as an artist reacting to the emergence of modernity and taking the lead in shaping art for the world in which we now live. Translated into English in the 150th anniversary year of the artist’s birth, and already celebrated and anticipated in the New York Times, this is a vital contribution to the scholarship on Mondrian as well as on the development of abstract art. 
A cofounder of the De Stijl movement and pioneer of 20th-century abstraction, Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) developed his iconic style of Neoplasticism―a rigorously limited yet generative language of straight lines and primary colors―out of a progressive exploration of painting that took him from naturalistic landscape painter to theoretician of geometric abstraction. 
Hans Janssen (1954–2021) is the author of Piet Mondrian: The Man Who Changed Everything and coauthor of The Story of De Stijl, and was a curator of modern art at Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.

Piet Mondrian: A Life

Humor & Entertainment

Ridinghouse/Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague

Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) emptied Cubism of its representational content, dissembling its angular contours into a few floating horizontal lines and reconstructing it anew as irregular squares of primary color. Mondrian dubbed the abstract style at which he arrived Neoplasticism, a term that eventually became synonymous with De Stijl, the Dutch avant-garde group composed of artists Theo van Doesburg, Bart van der Leck and Vilmos Huszar and the architects Gerrit Rietveld, Robert van 't Hoff and J.J.P. Oud, as well as Mondrian himself. More influential and foundational than any other design ethos of the early twentieth century, De Stijl provided the basis for much of the Bauhaus aesthetic, as well as Concrete art and the architecture of Mies van der Rohe. Collectively, the movement can be said to have translated Mondrian's pure painting into applied design for clothing, furniture (most famously Rietveld's Red and Blue chair), interiors, houses, blocks of flats and even whole towns. This volume looks at the full arc of Mondrian's evolution, from his early works executed in Neoimpressionist and Luminist idioms to his arrival at a pure Neoplastic abstraction, and traces De Stijl's extrapolations of Mondrian's art into a multidisciplinary utopian design project.

Mondrian De Stijl

Mühling, Matthias

Kaiser, Franz

Rappe, Felicia

Reference

Hatje Cantz

Piet Mondrian /allemand

Prestel

"After several years, my work unconsciously began to deviate more and more from the natural aspects of reality. Experience was my only teacher; I knew little of the modern art movement. When I first saw the work of the Impressionists, van Gogh, van Dongen, and Fauves, I admired it. But I had to seek the true way alone. . . . I forsook natural color for pure color. I had come to feel that the colors of nature cannot be reproduced on canvas. Instinctively, I felt that painting had to find a new way to express the beauty of nature."—Piet Mondrian 
Piet Mondrian is one of the most recognizable artists of the 20th century. His grid paintings, beginning in 1920 (when he was nearly 50) are perhaps the most iconic statement of the modernist aesthetic. But preceding these paintings stands a career of nearly 30 years during which Mondrian evolved from a painter of atmospheric landscapes and embarked on a distinctive path towards abstraction. This book focuses exclusively on the process of Mondrian finding his abstract style, analyzing in depth the disparate influences upon him—aesthetic, historical, intellectual, and spiritual—in the years up to 1914.

Mondrian 1892-1914: The Path to Abstraction

Mondrian, Piet

Kimbell Art Museum

Musee, D'Orsay

Joosten, Joop M.

W-Books

• A survey of the work of Jean Brusselmans, one of the most original of all Belgian Modernists The Flemish painter Jean Brusselmans (1884-1953) was a contemporary of artists such as Constant Permeke and Gustave De Smet. He began his artistic career at the height of Flemish Expressionism, but he was far more than a pure Expressionist. His ultimate goal was to reveal the harmonic order of things in his paintings. Brusselmans' oeuvre cannot easily be pigeonholed into one category or another. He was always searching for a refined, authentic art, for the correct proportions and for the perfect balance between figuration and abstraction. Brusselmans reduced reality to its essence. He was profoundly influenced by, amongst other things, Belgian abstract artists, constructivists, Cézanne's structural use of colour and the objective idiom of Le Corbusier. Jean Brusselmans was one of the most original artists of Belgian modernism. His innovative style was, and still is, a source of inspiration for many contemporary artists. This catalogue is published to coincide with a major exhibition by Jean Brusselmans at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague (17 February - 10 June 2018), which will then travel to Chemnitz, Germany. The exhibition focuses on the period 1931-1949, in which Brusselmans developed a highly personal style and idiom. With text contributions from, amongst others, Rudi Fuchs (art historian) and Hans Janssen (curator, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague) and an interview with Jan Dibbets. Text in English and Dutch. Contents: Preface by Benno Tempel; Interview with Jan Dibbets; Brusselmans Revisited by Rudi Fuchs; On the Visual Motif in the Work of Jean Brusselmans by Hans Janssen; Catalogue; Biography.

Jean Brusselmans

Cannibal Publishing

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