Netherlands marks De Stijl centenary

Artistic movement characterized by simplicity still looks modern today

It could have been called the KISS house, but it’s not.

The Rietveld Schröder House — a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Utrecht — is considered the world’s finest example of the De Stijl artistic movement. But it does follow the KISS design principle of “Keep it simple, stupid.”

Simplicity was the driving force behind the style launched by a handful of Dutch artists 100 years ago. “De Stijl” is Dutch for “the style,” and in this land of world-renowned artists and their elaborate paintings, it was a bold move to revert to straight horizontal and vertical lines, and primary colours.

Willem-Alexander, the 49-yearold King of the Netherlands, opened an art exhibition last month at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in The Hague, kicking off centenary celebrations at museums throughout the Netherlands.

Artists, architects and engineers were the first to venture into the De Stijl movement — this revolutionary new kind of art that changed the world’s view of design. Principal members included painter Piet Mondrian and painter, designer, and ceramicist Bart van der Leck. The Gemeentemuseum has the world’s largest collection of artwork by the two artists.

Mondrian and van der Leck, among others in the early De Stijl movement, started in Utrecht, the intellectual capital of the Netherlands and home of the renowned Utrecht University.

Architect and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld lived and worked in Utrecht and applied De Stijl thinking to his designs. So- cialite Truus Schröder- Schräder commissioned him to build the Rietveld Schröder House, which draws thousands of visitors annually from around the world to marvel at its unique simplicity. When it was built in 1924, it broke all the standard concepts of house design.

The two-storey house did away with static interior walls, particularly on the second floor, which has three bedrooms and a bathroom. By shifting and rotating some wall panels it becomes an open-concept living room.

Schröder- Schräder wanted a house that didn’t separate the outdoors from the indoors and one way of doing that was to have windows that swing open 90 degrees from the exterior walls. The colour palette — mostly black or grey on white — follows linear lines from outside the home into the interior. The Rietveld Schröder House is at the end of a street of traditional tall, narrow red-brick homes.

In the 1960s, a high-speed city roadway was built close to the home, but an overpass carrying the thoroughfare over Rietveld-Schroder’s street is finished with ceramic panels depicting a variety of De Stijl furniture designs. You’ll find similar furniture in the UNESCO World Heritage Site as you wander through.