Piet Mondrian, Composition 10, 1939-1942, Private collection.

The Modernism

The Modern movement is characterised by:
- Opposition to ornamentation.
- Exploration of new materials and abstract forms.
- The use of formal and aesthetic vocabulary with a compatibility with the realities of mass production technology.

Inventions that shaped the modernity...

Technology:

Internal combustion engine.
Electricity and petrol as new sources of power.
The automobile, bus, tractor and aeroplane.
Telephone, typewriter and lifts used in modern offices.
Synthetic dyes, man-made fibres and plastics.
New Engineering Materials reinforced concrete, aluminium and steel.

Mass media & Entertainment:

• Advertising and mass circulation newspapers (1890)
• The Gramophone (1877) Thomas Edison
• Cinematography (1895) Lumiere brothers
• Wireless Telegraph (1895) Guglielmo Marconi
• First radio wave transmission (1901) Guglielmo Marconi
• First movie theatre, The Nickelodeon, Pittsburgh (1905)

Science:

• Freud’s psychoanalysis (1900)
• Discovery of Uranium and Radium radioactivity (1897- 1899)
• Max Planck’s quantum theory of energy (1900)
• Einstein’s theory of relativity (1905 and 1916)

“DE STIJL” MOVEMENT (‘the Style’) 1917 – 1928 (Also known as Neo-Plasticism)

• Formed by a group of Dutch artists, architects & designers: most notably Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg.
• The Neutrality of the Netherlands during WWI helped avant- garde ideas to flourish there.
• The magazine ‘De Stijl’ first published in 1917 disseminated ideas which affected all the arts.
• De Stijl explores pure abstraction and simplicity — form reduced to the rectangle and other geometric shapes, and color to the primary colors, along with black and white.
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Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) is the most important Dutch artist of the 20th Century.
• Through his evolution of a purely abstract style of painting he develops what he names Neo-Plasticism.
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“This new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance. Natural form and colour… it should find its expression in abstraction of form and colour . That is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary colour…

(Mondrian 1919)”

Theo van Doesburg (1883 -1931), Dutch writer, painter and architect.

• Met Mondrian in 1915 and moves towards an abstract style of painting.
• Produces the first issue of ‘De Stijl’ 1917, continuing it till his death in 1931.
• Through his writing and lecture tours he makes contact with members of the Bauhaus, Suprematism & Russian Constuctivism.
• The above signals the ‘international phase’ of De Stijl and a change of membership. Mondrian withdraws from the group after Van Doesburg introduces the diagonal into his work.
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• Main Protagonists of the De Stijl Movement:
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• Theo van Doesburg (1883 – 1931) painter, designer and writer, published "De Stijl " 1917 – 1931
• Piet Mondrian (1872 – 1944) painter
• Jacobous Oud (1890 – 1963) architect
• Gerrit Rietveld (1888 – 1964) architect and designer
• Georges Vantongerloo (1886 – 1965)