Friday, August 27, 2021

Theo van Doesburg (Dutch Modernism)

Anonymous Photographer
Theo van Doesburg in Uniform
1915
photograph
Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague

Theo van Doesburg
Seated Female Nude
1916
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Theo van Doesburg
Composition II - Still Life
1916
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Theo van Doesburg
Composition XVIII in Three Parts
1920
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Theo van Doesburg
Composition XX
1920
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Theo van Doesburg
Je suis contre tout et tous 
I.K. Bonset - Dada

1921
ink on photograph
Fondation Custodia, Paris

Theo van Doesburg and Kurt Schwitters
Kleine Dada Soirée, The Hague
1922
lithograph
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Theo van Doesburg
Cover for De Stijl
1922
letterpress
Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague

Theo van Doesburg
Mailing Wrapper for De Stijl
1926
letterpress
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Theo van Doesburg
Composition décentralisée
1924
gouache on board
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Theo van Doesburg
Color Solution 
ca. 1925
hand-colored reproduction of photograph
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Theo van Doesburg
Construction in Space-Time II
1924
gouache on paper
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Theo van Doesburg
Counter-Composition XIII 
1925-26
oil on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Theo van Doesburg
Counter-Composition VIII
1924
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Theo van Doesburg
Composition
1929
oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art

"Christian Emil Marie Küpper, who adopted the pseudonym Theo van Doesburg, was born in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on August 30, 1883.  His first exhibition of paintings was held in 1908 in the Hague.  In the early 1910s he wrote poetry and established himself as an art critic.  From 1914 to 1916 van Doesburg served in the Dutch army, after which time he settled in Leiden and began his collaboration with the architects J.J.P. Oud and Jan Wils.  In 1917 they founded the group De Stijl and the periodical of the same name.  . . .  In 1920 van Doesburg resumed writing, using the pen name I.K. Bonset and later Aldo Camini.  He visited Berlin and Weimar in 1921 and the following year taught at the Weimar Bauhaus.  . . .  He was interested in Dada at this time and worked with Kurt Schwitters as well as Jean Arp, Tristan Tzara and others.  . . .  The Landesmuseum of Weimar presented a solo show of van Doesburg's work in 1924.  The same year he lectured on modern literature in Prague, Vienna, and Hannover, and the Bauhaus published his Principles of Neo-Plastic Art.  A new phase of De Stijl was declared by van Doesburg in his manifesto of "Elementarism" published in 1926.  . . .  The artist died on March 7, 1931, in Davos, Switzerland."

– from biographical notes at the Guggenheim Museum, New York