SHAPING THE 20TH CENTURY

Pamela Buxton revels in this exhibition of Theo van Doesburg’s wide ranging work and influence, but is left with even more questions about an extraordinary man

What a fascinating character Theo van Doesburg must have been. Self-taught as an artist, he went on to become one of the founders of the influential De Stijl group, applying the principles of geometric abstraction to everything from typography to architecture. He was a fantastic networker, seeking out the best thinkers and artists and persuading them to contribute to his De Stijl magazine or collaborate with him on some new movement or project. He worked not only under his own name but under various pseudonyms when it was more expedient to hide under another identity. Even Theo van Doesburg was an assumed name. Somehow, he found time to acquire three wives and father six children. Then it was all over: just weeks after founding another art movement, he died at the age of 47 in 1931.

The show at the Tate Modern, Van Doesburg & the International Avant-Garde, celebrates not just his work, but his rather more important role as a catalyst and instigator of the work of others. It is disappointing there is so little about van Doesburg as a person. You are left wanting to know more about such an adventurous spirit – why did he take up painting after studying theatre? Why could he never settle on one creative direction? How could he reconcile supporting both the rule-based neo-plasticism of artists such as Mondrian and the anarchy of dadaism? What did he think of the work of the many great artists and designers he worked with, and what did they think of him?

We don’t really get answers from the show. What there is, however, is a fascinating look at a time of fast-moving creativity during and after the turbulence of the first world war. The cast are some of the seminal figures in 20th century art and design: Gerrit Rietveld, Mondrian, JJP Oud, Frederick Kiesler, Eileen Gray, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray as well as van Doesburg himself, demonstrating the exploration of abstract art through cubism, dadaism, neo-plasticism and constructivism.

A fair chunk of the show is devoted to the De Stijl group, active between 1917-28, which helped promote the work of this European avant-garde. Van Doesburg himself had no doubt of De Stijl’s importance, claiming that everyone in creative Europe had experienced it as a ‘living source of energy’. There’s a particularly fascinating account of how van Doesburg introduced diagonals into his work, thus breaking with the strict horizontal and vertical language of neo-plasticism and splitting with Mondrian.

Van Doesburg’s architectural collaborations with Oud and other De Stijl members are shown, his contributions being integral colour schemes and abstract floor designs. His House for an Artist in 1923, though unbuilt, is perhaps the most successful 3D application of the ideas he had developed through painting. This appears almost to float, with walls and floors picked out in primary colours.

When van Doesburg turned his hand to town planning in the early 1920s, the results are predictably radical. His Traffic City was way ahead of its time – proposing elevated high-rise buildings linked by aerial bridges which leave the ground free for traffic.

He was not one to give up. Determined to teach at the Bauhaus, he moved to Weimar in 1921, fully expecting to be given a job by the director. When this did not happen, he simply set up his own mini-school – attracting 25 Bauhaus students to his lectures. By the time he moved to Paris two years later the Bauhaus, probably helped by his irritant presence, was moving away from crafts towards machine production.

This exhibition is an informative delve into a time of great artistic change. Never likely to be acknowledged as a supreme exponent of any particular discipline, it gives van Doesburg his due as an influential thinker, mover and shaker. But we never really get to know him, which is a pity for such a one-off.

Van Doesburg & the International Avant-Garde – Constructing a New World, until May 16, Tate Modern, Bankside, London