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6Job:01212 Title: Basics typography (AVA)
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Futurism was not the only inspiration for constructivism.
The Dutch avant-garde movement De Stijl evolved
around Theo van Doesburg’s De Stijl magazine and was
helped by Piet Mondrian’s contribution. Much like visual
poetry, De Stijl was, in a sense, self-motivated, inspired
only by the work of contemporary painters. But whilst
visual poetry rejected mechanisation, De Stjil embraced
it. The geometric compositions used helped to develop
rigorous guidelines for both product and visual design.
Design had been stripped of any decorative elements.
With its very controlled approach, De Stijl provided
a kind of taming and anti-emotional infl uence on
constructivism. Compared to the dynamic, expressive
compositions of futurist art, De Stijl appeared rather calm
and organised, dominated by the clarity of geometric
forms. The formal aesthetics applied here showed a
profound understanding of the dynamic relationship
between compositional elements. Whilst futurism was an
art form that refl ected on industrialism, De Stijl became
an industrialised form of art. As such, it had not only a
crucial infl uence on Russian constructivism, but also
on the agenda of the German Bauhaus school in the
early 1920s.Van Doesburg fi rst visited the Bauhaus in 1920. Only
a few months later, he moved to Weimar hoping
for a teaching position at the Bauhaus. Here, his
infl uence helped to overcome the expressionist phase
that dominated the beginning stage of the Bauhaus
movement. With van Doesburg’s growing infl uence, the
interest of Bauhaus in constructivist approaches also
rose, as did the ambition to turn art into production-art.
With László Moholy-Nagy at his side, Walter Gropius, the
fi rst Bauhaus principal, established the Bauhaus school
as a functionalist design institution. Herbert Bayer’s
Universalschrift,1926, indicates the modernist ambition
to fi nd a pragmatic, universal concept of aesthetic
expression. In 1928, both Gropius and Moholy-Nagy left
the Bauhaus, on the basis that the Bauhaus was now
suffi ciently established.‘Our guiding principle was that
design is neither an intellectual
nor a material affair, but simply
an integral part of the stuff of life,
necessary for everyone in
a civilized society.’
Walter GropiusJob:01212 Title: Basics typography (AVA)
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