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