A century of De Stijl

It starts as soon as I arrive. In Den Haag Centraal railway station, the kiosks, windows, lift shaft, piano and even the hoarding on the building site outside, are all cheerfully decked out in red, blue and yellow rectangles, black lines and an occasional patch of straight-sided white. Holland’s capital has gone Mondrian mad; the style of De Stijl (the modernist art movement to which he belonged) is plastered all over town, indeed over much of the country. Holland is in the grip of ‘Mondrian to Dutch Design: 100 Years of De Stijl’, a year celebrating its ‘most important contribution to the 20th century’.

De Stijl’s influence is everywhere. It has influenced (and disrupted) the Bauhaus, modernism and the International Style in architecture; it’s visible in today’s colour blocking, visible construction, open-plan living.