De Stijl: The Beginning And Key Characteristics Of Design Movements

Though the start of the modernisation may trace back to the beginning of Industrial Revolution. “Modernism in the design world did not exist in a fully developed form, until well after First World War.” (Wilk, 2006) Causing the great loss of lives and other countless damage to the world, it reshaped many people’s way of thinking the world. With the inspiration of early avant-garde movement, the modernism began to emerge advocating an utopian future and shared certain core principles by various styles of modernists: rejecting the past and applied ornament; forms follow function, a preference for

Van Gogh was really good at what he did I really liked the Starry Night over Rhone painting it looked really realistic. I liked the way he always painted the sky or painted things in nature. He used the same colors that he used in the Starry Night to paint the art piece Starry Night Over

The art of this time is extremely fascinating because of the change of views, there were many different styles of art emerging. Pieter Bruegel was a popular artist because of his satirical paintings. As seen in Triumph of Death (below) all of the people in the painting are representing

Jan van Eyck was from the Netherlands and painted during the fifteenth century. Like many artists during this time period in the northern regions of Europe, van Eyck favoured oil paint to be the medium of his paintings. The art that came out of this time period contained a great deal of detail. Jan van Eyck’s most notable piece of artwork is the Arnolfini Double Portrait. The painting contained many of the qualities of fifteenth century flemish artwork. The painting was done in oil and was very detailed.

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch painter that lived through the Baroque era along with the dutch holden age. He wasn’t exactly wealthy and produced very few paintings. For the most part Vermeer painted domestic interior scenes. His works are largely genre pieces and portraits and his subjects were usually middle-class 17th century Dutch society, anywhere from a milkmaid to higher-class merchantmen. Besides this, he also painted with religious, poetical, musical, and scientific elements. He worked with very expensive pigments and was known was his use of light in his work. He also used many earth colors to portray a warm light within the paintings interior. He was inspired by Leonardo DaVinci’s observation that the surface of an object takes the

One of the most recognized architectural movements are the modern movements which comprise of the International Style, Art Deco Style, and Moderne Style. Modern Movements occurred between 1925 and 1950. Out of the three styles of architecture, International Style has been selected for this art analysis. The International Style of Architecture occurred between 1920s and 1930s, and it is characterized by starkly unornamented rectangular shapes which are very different from the traditional forms of architecture. The reason why International Style of architecture has been chosen for analysis in this paper is the fact that the rectangular shapes used in constructing the style have been punctuated with bands of windows which depict the modern purpose

Other Influences on Vincent Van Gogh’s Works As it was mentioned moving to Paris in 1886 had a great impact on Van Gogh’s works. Impressionism and post-impressionism also played a significant role in forming his unique style with usage of vibrant and vivid colors. Japanese printworks are also important to mention as Van Gogh adopt some of their aspects and elements which appeared in his works (Vieira et al. 119). Moreover, there were other artists and painters who played a vital role in shaping Van Gogh’s style. Among them, there are Pissarro, Bernard, and Gauguin, among others.

The Designer Gerrit Thomas Rietveld lived in Utrecht, the Netherlands and was qualified as a cabinet maker. In 1917 Rietveld set up his own furniture store, this gave him the opportunity to create furniture to his very own design. He was part of an early 1920’s movement called De Stijl (Dutch for Style.) From 1930 Rietveld worked on his own as an independent Architect. He remained part of the De Stijl movement until 1931. There he worked alongside Piet Mondriaan and Theo van Doesberg and many others. The De Stijl movement was formed by a group of architects and artists who were greatly influenced by the ideals of DaDa. De Stijl was founded by Theo van Doesburg. The term Neo- Plasticism, meaning “a new plastic art” was adopted by Mondrian to describe the types of work the movement members created. De Stijl was based around the principals of fundamental geometry.

There were many contributions made by the artists and designers working in the De Stijl and the Constructivism movements. Two artists that greatly contributed to the De Stijl movement were Picasso and Braque. Their paintings helped in defining “a vocabulary of geometric forms”, while still using the elements of the real world. Another very important contributor to the De Stijl movement was Piet Mondrian. Mondrian also helped in defining the vocabulary of art and design, even further than Picasso and Braque had previously done. He used only primary colors, along with black and white, in his artwork. Mainly, all the artists of the De Stijl movement wanted their artwork to simply rely on the fundamental characteristics of having a vertical and horizontal grid. These artists hoped by using this grid, their artwork would open up space, instead of enclosing space. Gerrit Rietveld showed these same defining characteristics of the De Stijl art in his famous chair. His chair completely went against the traditional, or the expected, elements of a normal chair. “Both the arms and the base of the chair are insistently locked in a vertical and horizontal grid.” The seat and the back of the chair were used to help create a more open space. Rietveld also only used

The dawn of streamline moderne, a type of Art Deco design and architecture begins. The style is marked by curving forms and long horizontal lines. Streamline Moderne style was inspired by vehicle styles such as cars, airplains, and ships. “They expressed speed in movement, economy of line and modern function” (8). The style is reflective of the time period economy and concept of competence.

The early 20th century in Europe was a time of rapid change. Modern art movements explored new ways of communicating this new modern condition – what is was like to live in an environment that was advancing and developing with incrediable speed . Dynamism became a means for the artists of the time to communicate what has been termed the modern condition.

The focus of this essay is to explain why the International Typographic Style or “Swiss” style was so important to the mid twentieth century and how it got started. Firstly, it is an art movement that internationally began in the 1950’s, but the origins can be traced back at least thirty years. It can be thought of as a combination of elements from other movements such as Constructivism, De Stijl and the Bauhaus. According to Richard Hollis’ book Swiss Graphic Design, there are “at least three factors that account for the ‘Swiss’ style” (Hollis, R. 2006, P9), these being the country’s location, the language and the culture. There is evidence to prove that there are at least 2 other factors, especially for the origin of the style, which is shown in the book, along with several others. Although not directly linked to the foundation of the style itself, these 2 other factors include the designers and the typography, after all, it is known as the International Typographic Style. In this essay we will be discussing each of them in turn, and explaining views as to why they were important and what effect they had on graphic design in the mid twentieth century.

The Bauhaus school was founded in 1919 in Weimar by German architect Walter Gropius (1883 - 1969). In 1923, Walter Gropius introduced the agreement between “creative artists and the industrial world”. The Bauhaus is most famous for the idea of combining forms and functions. They combined both fine arts and design elements to create a curriculum that trained artists and designers to be capable of producing both functional and aesthetic work. One of the main goals was to bring design and technology together. During the Bauhaus period, Fine art and craft were combined together and aimed toward problem solving for an innovative, modern and industrial society. Nowadays, the Bauhaus legacy continues in modern designs, such as minimalism, or design brands like IKEA. In this essay, I will analyze Bauhaus’s influence on modern design, including architecture and furniture design by exploring different examples from different periods of time.

This Essay will examine the South African design Style and whether it is a myth or reality. The characteristics that possibly represent the South African design style and the local vs global contrast in South Africa.

The second chapter overlooks a series of art movements such as De Stijl, Bauhaus, Enlightenment, CIAM, and the work of famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. This chapter attempts to find their position on senses and the cultural memory. The authors