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What artistic ideas did the De Stijl movement reject?
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Piet Mondrian
Mondrian, photograph by Arnold Newman, 1942.
The De Stijl movement, co-founded by Piet Mondrian, advocated for a radical departure from traditional artistic conventions. Specifically, the movement rejected the following:
- Visually Perceived Reality: The group demanded the complete abandonment of representational subject matter, moving away from the depiction of nature or specific fragments of the physical world.1
- Personal Temperament: De Stijl sought to free art from being guided by the individual emotions or subjective personality of the artist.1
- Momentary Visual Perception: The movement rejected art that focused on capturing fleeting impressions or temporary visual experiences.1
- Incomplete Abstraction: Mondrian, in particular, felt that movements like Analytical Cubism had failed to reach their full potential because they did not progress toward "pure abstraction" or Neoplasticism.2
By eliminating these representational and subjective elements, De Stijl artists aimed to replace them with a universal language of clarity, order, and harmony based on geometric rules and primary colors.21