Van Doesburg & The International Avant-Garde

Van Doesburg & The International Avant-Garde
Constructing a new world

Van Doesburg at Tate Modern – FT.com

1930 saw the launch of two short-lived rival formations of abstract non-objective artist: van Doesburg’s Art Concert and Seuphor and Torres-Garcia’s Cerle et Carre.
The proclamation called for a universal art composed of planes and colours executed crisply and mechanically. Form ab rhythm were to be governed by mathematical priciple, while abstract cinema provided a model of combining space and time in a single work of art.

Piet Mondrian,
Composition with Double Line and Yellow 1932, oil on canvas;

Van Doesburg’s Counter-Compositions rejected aspects of Mondrian’s theory of Neo-Plasticism, such as distinction between line and plane. After the reconciliation in 1929 and van Doesburg’s death in 1931, Mondrian began to reconsider his practice. In 1932 he introduced the so-called ‘double line’ into his scheme, creating a sense of overlapping and interweaving as we read the white between the two horizontallines passing under the vertical line. Mondrian had avoided such spatial effects before but from now on would use lines to produce rhythm and dynamism in a new way.

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