Theo van Doesburg in particular also had a profound influence on the Bauhaus, the first and most influential industrial design school in Europe. It had an effect on every aspect of modern art and design in the 20th century.
One of the first artists to criticise the orna mental excess in the design and architecture of Art Nouveau was Henrik Petrus Berlage. At around the turn of the century he already began to influence the artistic landscape of art in Holland. De Stijl developed Berlage's ideas into extremes: It was dedicated to a utopian idea of an ideal world. The aim was to achieve complete harmony and balance in its art. It was achieved by creating a counter world to reality, often without any referral to the shapes and colours in the real world. Its art was characterised by abundance and re duction. Artists of De Stijl influenced each other gradually, and a typical style developed: art that was largely based on the square as a pure shape and on the primary colours, gray, black and white as pure colours.
Art was seen in De Stijl as being able to represent the perfect state of harmony that was still to be achieved in society. Piet Mondrian, the most popular artist of De Stijl defined the movement in the first issue of "De Stijl" magazine as something that was to be an expression of a new ideal world, an idea that was typical for the age. The beauty of this ideal world was thought to be universal and to transcend the individual. As a result, artists conscious of their real aim must express themselves by methods that were universal and abstract, that is, elementary. Art was to be based on rational thinking and mathematical/geometrical principles. Anything emotional or individual was taboo. Shapes or colours borrowed from nature were banned as nature was thought to be anti universal and marked by individuals.
Beauty was said to equal truth. As part of the journey towards the ideal and true Mondrian and other artists created compo sitions by elementary means in which beauty was the balance of opposites.
