A Study of De Stijl and the Piet Mondrian style of painting

Over the years I have come across a number of De Stijl style painting in various galleries, usually by Piet Mondrian and although I understand that as an art movement the De Stijl group has an important part to play in modern abstract painting, I have never fully appreciated or gained from my exposure to this style of painting. It just seams to lack feeling or passion as it dose not provoke a reaction in me.

The De Stijl art movement developed during the first world war, Dutch artists isolated from the rest of the art world due to the Neutrality of the Netherlands during this conflict began exploring New art and founded the De Stijl art movement.  Artist such as Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and Bart van der Leck all experimented with this style for several years.  Mondrian named the movement (Neo-Plasticism) However today we commonly refer to this artistic technique as De Stijl, meaning “The Style” which was the name of the journal published by Doesburg about Neo-Plasticism. The De Stijl philosophy proposed total simplicity and abstraction using only straight horizontal and vertical lines and limiting themselves to the primary colours, red, blue and yellow and  three primary values of black, white or grey.










A painting in the style De Stijl
#30 acrylic paint on paper
9 x 9 inches approx







As part of my ongoing study into art and the different ways to make art I added De Stijl to my list, partly as a method of discovery and understanding this particular artistic group but also to expand my own visual vocabulary and although as you can see in this piece I did not fully follow the principals of the De Stijl, I still feel that I gained a great deal from this painting.  I freely admit that I am not totally happy with the colours mixes that I made or the level of care in its execution as some of the lines are not as strait or even as they could (should) be which I feel lets down the panting in terms of composition it is however a good start and has proven that further work in this area will be of huge value.

In conducting my research I discovered a number of sources that threw a huge amount of light into the De Stijl art movement and the lives of its principal artist such as Piet Mondrian which I found very helpful and have included these links for your interest which I am certain you will find of great value.

Mondrian / Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Empty Easel The De Stijl Art Movement

The tate.org