neoplasticism

Neoplasticism, also known as Nieuwe Beelding in Dutch and commonly linked to the De Stijl movement, is an early 20th-century approach to art and design developed in the Netherlands around 1917–1920. It sought to express universal order and harmony through pure abstraction, reducing form to the most essential elements: straight horizontal and vertical lines, rectangular fields, and a restrained palette of primary colors along with black, white, and gray.

Its visual language uses a grid-like arrangement of non-overlapping rectangles created by a vertical and horizontal axis, arranged to achieve asymmetrical balance. Color is limited to red, blue, and yellow, supplemented by black, white, and gray. The aim was a universal poetry of form, free from direct representation or personal emotion.

Origin and figures: Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg were central to its formulation; other members included Bart van der Leck and Gerrit Rietveld, whose architecture and furniture embodied neoplastic principles. Mondrian's paintings moved toward thinner lines and larger fields of color; van Doesburg advocated experimentation with diagonals, leading to tensions that helped dissolve the formal group in the 1920s. Rietveld's Red and Blue Chair and related works applied the language to three-dimensional objects.

Impact and legacy: Neoplasticism influenced modernist architecture, graphic design, and product design through its insistence on simplification, grid structure, and a universal visual language. The De Stijl alliance gradually dissolved after internal disagreements, but Mondrian's style remained a touchstone of abstract art. In later discourse, neoplasticism is used to describe Mondrian's ideology of art stripped to its essential elements.