De Stijl

    De Stijl which literary means ‘the style’ in Dutch, took place in Holland in the early 1900’s. It was both an architectural movement and a visual art movement. It was basically a movement where members believed a lot in harmony and spirituality. Design was pure abstraction. The style had limitations to just the essentials of form and colour. These painting are very simple, all similar, consisting only of horizontal and vertical lines, basic shapes as squares and rectangles, the three primary colours and black and white. Artists emphasised a lot on simplicity; they believed that life should be simple. The whole purpose of the painting was to make it as simple as possible, so that the artist was able to express his simplicity. This fascination with shapes was borrowed from cubism. An important aspect of these paintings was that they were never framed because artists believed that the lines of the paintings were supposed to be continuous extensions of the world.

Piet Mondrian

Oil on canvas

London Tate Gallery

Theo van Doesburg

1917

    The famous Red and Blue Chair was first designed in 1917 by Gerrit Rietveld and was one of the first 3D designs of the De Stijl movement. This chair was made from beech wood and was not painted, until Bart van der Leck created a newer version of it in the 1920’s. He painted the chair black with areas of primary colours. Just like the paintings, the chair is very geometrical, with straight continuous lines. It is not a chair to sit comfortable on, but to have a bold statement in a room. It doesn't look comfortable at all. It is designed more for decoration. This chair became an icon of the De Stijl movement. The four colours of the chair are very bold and pure.

    A very important building, designed also by Gerrit Rietveld is the Schroeder House, which was bult in 1924. At the time this house was very modern as a design. The houses that were built recently around it, seem older than the De Stijl building. This shows how futuristic Rietveld ideas were. The building basically looks very similar to one of the paintings at the time. Both interior and exterior is designed only with straight lines and no curved edges are found.

    Rietveld designed the house that could create a connection between the inside and outside, in fact both exterior and interior are very similar. Every form inside the house was designed for a function. The inside is designed as an open plan with only sliding walls and doors, so that the person living in it could make rooms only when needed. He also created the furniture for temporary purposes. Some of the furniture is designed that you could hide it when you are not using it. For example, the kitchen benches are hinged to the wall, so that they could be closed when not in need and more room is created in the house.

Below are pictures of the De Stijl style in todays world. This style is still being loved by people and designers, and below are clothes and items that are designed and inspired from this style. Both the Adidas and Vans shoes are very modern in style and trendy. The painted nails are very fun and bold. The dress was seen on catwalk for autumn/winter 2009 with a whole collection inspired from De Stijl designed by Prada. All these designs are a perfect representation of the famous paintings with yellow, red, blue and monocrome colours. 

Bibliography:
1995 by Charlotte Jirousek http://char.txa.cornell.edu/art/decart/destijl/decstijl.htm
14th Dec 2012 http://saratantib.blogspot.com/2012/12/de-stijl-fashion-design-transformation.html
All searched on the 3rd Nov 2013