The End of The Stijl

On 7th March 1931 Theo van Doesburg died of a heart attack. After he died, the magazine `De Stijl' stopped publication and the movement was disbanded; there were several reasons for this.

The most important reason being that none of the members could lead the group after van Doesburg had passed away, this was because he was not only the founder of De Stijl, but also the `ambassador' of the movement. Although his works were not as popular as Mondrian's, he was the movement's primary spokesman, and helped to promote it across Europe.

The second reason is that the members in De Stijl could not meet frequently, because they lived in different countries. After van Doesburg's death, despite the fact that individual members still kept in touch, they only met briefly and most communication took place by letter. For example, Rietveld and Mondrian had never met at all. However, De Stijl could not have continued without a strong central leader. Furthermore, many artists and architects' work, such as van der Leck and J.J.P.Oud, did not fundamentally change De Stijl, but they disagreed on the style of other members, which led to them leaving the De Stijl movement fairly early in their careers. When van Doesburg was still alive, they respected him even when they had a disagreement or argument with him, or when they were opposed. This is clear from their tribute to him in the final memorable issue of the De Stijl magazine.

Moreover, Mondrian broke away from De Stijl for a short time in 1923 because he could not accept diagonals, whereas van Doesburg insisted on the diagonals dynamic aspects, and indeed featured it in his art.

In the later development of De Stijl, van Doesburg recruited some artists whose work had little in common with the earlier phase of De Stijl. Therefore, the original De Stijl had changed into van Doesburg's own style, in a sense that only van Doesburg himself and the magazine he edited were 'De Stijl'.

De Stijl was only the work of those artists and architects whose work had shown the principles of De Stijl. However, these principles were not static; it was a style that had been developed over a short period of time. This is another reason why De Stijl movement stopped when van Doesburg past away.

Also, van Doesburg had written in the fist issue of the De Stijl magazine in 1917, "For the propagation of the beautiful, a spiritual group is more necessary than a social one." This sentence shows that van Doesburg preferred a loose association of individualists, rather than a social group. Even though the De Stijl movement died with him, the style has remained and can still be seen to this day in the form of some types of modern architecture

Analysis.

Comparison and Feedback

De Stijl in graphic design has evolved along these years, starting from the publication of De Stijl Magazine, which represents the most significant work of graphic design from the movement. But the true major influences on the development of graphic design were the ideas of reduction of form and color. The early graphic design that is influenced by De Stijl not only includes the basic elements of the movement's value - which are white background, black lines, and primary colors — but also influenced by the Russian typography which used geometrical shapes.

As times flies by, De Stijl movements finally have established the originality of their specialty and have evolved for the modern needs. Not using all of the elements of De Stijl at the same time, but using several elements of it and making it so much more modern and appeal modern society. De Stijl can influ-ence in so many ways, without simply using the usual pattern, which you expected to see, but the colors and the simplicity itself could help the product to appeal the consumer. (Thomson, J 2016, pers. comm., May 3).