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The Mathematical Connections in the De Stijl movement Essay

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The Mathematical Connections in the De Stijl movement

De Stijl or “The Style” is a movement that originated in Holland with the first publication of the periodical De Stijl in 1917. The works produced took art to a whole new level, pushing creativity to the new modern era. The emergence of the De Stijl movement coincided with constructivism in Russia, with influences from Cubism and the artist Kadinsky. However, the movement was not confined to just one art form. Similar to the Blue Rider and Bauhaus movements, De Stijl spanned to other forms of art like sculpture, furniture design, architecture, and graphic design. The movement continued up until the last published issue of De Stijl in 1931. Major contributors to the …show more content…

Schoenmaekers.

Schoenmaekers was concerned with pure mathematical structures like the square and rectangle. These figures should be defined on the space of a plane along some axis. The structured environment is an ideal common ground for many of the artists of the De Stijl movement to branch from in their work. Through the precision in a given formula, creation becomes depersonalized from the unstructured society. De Stijl developed during the time of science, where it was seen as a utopia because of the introduction to the future. Science and math provide a structured system of formulas where there is a logical reason for placement. For example, in a mathematical equation there is always an exact answer in the calculation. In turn, this precision was an interesting concentration for the artists in the De Stijl movement where “everywhere, the haphazardness of the individual approach is having to give place to the generalization, the formula”(Jaffe 9).

The same idea of utopia is also exhibited in the idea of nature versus man in the Dutch landscape. Jaffe explains, “It was not the Dutch landscape which inspired De Stijl, but it seems to me very possible that the Dutch Landscape has been built according to the same principles on which the work of De Stijl was based”(11). The land resembles the works in the De Stijl in the simple grid pattern humans have added to the nature. Man

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