Theo Van Doesburg
C. E. M. Kupper
(who also used the pseudonyms Aldo Camini and I.K. Bronset),
b. Utrecht, 1883; d. Davos, Switzerland, 1931.

Founder of De Stijl in Holland, he was the sustaining intellectual of the movement; painter, architect and theoretician, editor of the periodical De .Stijl which, after the departure of Mondrian in 1925 from the movement, became the unique vehicle for his theory of the fundamental unity of the arts. During military service (1914-16) Van Doesburg experienced crucial changes in his artistic work and developed an abstract cubism closely related to early Mondrian. He collaborated with J.J. P. OUD and Jan Wils, with whom he founded the group De Spinx in 1916. De Stijl was founded in 1917 by Van Doesburg with Mondrian, Huszar, Oud and Kok. In 1918 the De Still manifesto was published which led Van Doesburg to tour Germany in 1920, where he met Gropius. He lectured at the Bauhaus, where he continued to publish De Still. He had close associations with the Dadaists and wrote at this time under the name of Aldo Camini. During 1923 and 1924 Van Doesburg developed his “neo-plastic” aesthetic of mass with Van Eesteren and exhibited with him and RiErvap in Paris and Nancy. It was during this period that he developed his “contra compositions” and introduced Elementarism, and its concern with geometrical form, to De SO. In 1926 Van Doesburg was commissioned to redesign the Aubette restaurant in Strasbourg. This was his canonical achievement of fusing painting and architecture. In 1928 Van Doesburg returned to Paris where, with Van Eesteren, he designed and built the Studio House at Meudon-val-Fleury. This was intended to be the new De Stijl Centre. The simultaneous compositions were produced at this time. Soon after the
completion of the Studio and the establishment of the new group “Abstract- Creation”, Van Doesburg travelled to Switzerland where he died. In the words of Allan Doig: “from tectonic painting developed a constructive architecture; from an ideal and utopian theory developed a practice which, although initially modest, became increasingly influential in the 1920’s”.

List of major buildings / works
“Restaurant “I’Aubette”, Strasbourg, 1926. Studio House, Meudon-val-Fleury, 1929-31.

Bibliography
Writings by Van Doesburg are numerous. A useful summary appears in De Still: Visions of Utopia (see below). See especially De Stijl 1917-31. J. J. Sweeny (ed.), Theo Van Doesburg (exhibition catalogue), New York, 1947.
H.L. C. Jaffe, De Still 1917-1931. The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, Amsterdam, 1956.
B. Gay, De Stijl (Camden exhibition catalogue), London, 1968.
M. Friedman (ed.), De Still: 1917-1931 Visions of Utopia, Oxford, 1982.
E. Van Straaten, Theo Van Doesburg 1883-1913, The Hague, 1983.
C. Bocktaad (ed.), Neo Plasticisin in Architecture, Delft, 1983.
A. Doug, Theo Van Doesburg, Cambridge, 1986.
E. Van Straaten, Theo Van Doesburg, Painter and Architect, The Hague, 1988.