De Stijl (Dutch for "The Style"), also known as Neoplasticism , was a Dutch art movement founded in Leiden in 1917. Centered around the artist and theorist Theo van Doesburg and the journal of the same name, the movement brought together artists, designers, and architects who advocated for a pure, universal form of abstraction. Proponents of De Stijl believed that art could be a vehicle for spiritual and social harmony, and they sought to achieve this by reducing visual compositions to their essential elements of form and color.

The artistic philosophy of the movement, primarily developed by painter Piet Mondrian, was called Neoplasticism. It was governed by a strict set of rules: a visual language restricted to straight horizontal and vertical lines, and a palette limited to the three primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) alongside the "non-colors" of white, black, and gray. In their view, vertical and horizontal lines represented the fundamental dualities of the universe, such as spirit and matter, and their dynamic interplay could create universal balance and order. All subjective elements, including expressive brushwork, curved lines, and naturalistic representation, were eliminated to achieve this objective purity.

While Mondrian applied these principles to painting, architect and designer Gerrit Rietveld translated them into three-dimensional forms, most famously in his Red and Blue Chair (1923) and the Rietveld Schröder House (1924). The movement aimed to dissolve the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and architecture, integrating art into the environment of everyday life. Although the core group fractured in the late 1920s and dissolved after van Doesburg's death in 1931, De Stijl's influence was profound. Its principles of geometric abstraction and its utopian vision had a significant impact on the Bauhaus , the International Style of architecture, and the course of modern graphic design.

In Mondrian's opinion, only abstract art can show the harmony behind what's visible. He explored and refined his conception of pure colour and form his work and writings, becoming one of the most important artists of the 1st half of the 20th century and an important touchstone for all abstract artists.

In the year this art movements was founded, there was still a war going on. With De Stijl, people longed for a world of inner peace, harmony and order, instead of the everyday chaos. The mission of artists of this movement was to create a new art in the spirit of peace and harmony. They believed that the reduction, the purification, of art (for, colour and line) would in turn lead to a renewal of society, and that when art was fully integrated into life it would no longer be necessary.

Artists wanted to break the age-old tradition of art needing a clear presentation. They did not want to paint what was in front of them, for example a landscape, but they wanted to paint their feelings and thoughts. And for them, that was best done by extreme simplicity and abstraction. They also argued that while a realistic painting shows reality, it does not show the truth.

De Stijl paintings are composed of horizontal and vertical lines, right angles, and rectangular or square surfaces of flat colours. The palette is reduced to primary colours of red, yellow and blue, and the neutral colours of white, black and grey.

Architects wanted to "start from zero" with this movement, to break away from designing 'old-fashioned' houses. De Stijl architcture is similar with paintings of this aesthetic. It shows a similar clarity, austerity and order, taking the geometric abstraction of straight lines, right angles and clean surfaces in 3D. Gerrit Rietveld's Shröder House in Utrecht, the Netherlands (1924) is in many ways the masterpiece of the whole De Stijl movement.

Features of De Stijl architecture:

Out of all the De Stijl artists, Piet Mondrian is without any doubt the most famous. His paintings with white, black and primary colored-rectangles are very iconic. Because of this, they inspired multiple designers in created objects and fashion that remind us of these paintings.