Founded in Leiden in October 1917 by Theo van Doesburg together with Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck, the poet Antony Kok, and the architect J.J.P. Oud, De Stijl became the manifesto of one of the twentieth century's most influential movements — reducing art and architecture to the straight line, the right angle, and primary colour.
Van Doesburg edited the journal for its entire run, from 1917 until his death in 1931. The group itself was never a tightly bound collective: Van der Leck left as early as 1918 over artistic differences, while Gerrit Rietveld joined that same year. In 1924, Mondrian broke decisively with Van Doesburg over the use of diagonal lines — Van Doesburg's "Elementarism" against Mondrian's strict horizontal-vertical Neo-Plasticism.
At its height the movement counted around 100 members, though the journal's own circulation never exceeded roughly 300 copies — a striking contrast to its enormous later influence on the Bauhaus, on Mies van der Rohe, and on modern design at large. Van Doesburg died of a heart attack in Davos, Switzerland, on 7 March 1931. His widow, Nelly van Doesburg, released a final memorial issue in January 1932, assembled with contributions from past and present members of the group.
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These entries are draft placeholders based on well-documented De Stijl–affiliated buildings, pending direct extraction from this title's own pages into the database. De Stijl has not yet been catalogued in the project database — do not treat this list as confirmed citations from the magazine itself.
Sourced from Wikipedia and multiple academic accounts of the journal's history. Van Doesburg edited the journal alone for its entire fourteen-year run.
Painter, writer, and architect; founded and edited the journal for its entire run until his death. Designed much of its typography himself.
Published his foundational essays on Neo-Plasticism in the journal's early issues before breaking with Van Doesburg in 1924.
Theo van Doesburg's widow; released the journal's final memorial issue in January 1932 with contributions from past and present members.
Scans of the 36 issues held in this archive were digitised, paginated, OCR-processed, and assembled into PDF booklets by the Architectural Periodicals Database team.
Copyright status has not yet been fully researched for this title. Under EU law (Directive 2006/116/EC), protection for a named author's work lasts 70 years after that author's death. Theo van Doesburg died in 1931 and Piet Mondrian in 1944, meaning their individually authored contributions remain in copyright in the EU until 2001 and 2014 respectively — both terms have therefore already expired. The Architectural Periodicals Database does not assert ownership of the original creative content, only of the database itself. If you are a rights holder and believe your work has been used without appropriate permission, please contact us at info@architecturalperiodicals.com.