Visual Art of the Decade

By the early 1920s increasing political control had begun to dampen the euphoria of the Russian avant garde, but their forward-looking, utopian idealism had counterparts elsewhere. In Holland, De Stijl (The Style) was the most rigorous of the groups which sought to create a brave new world in the aftermath of the war, encompassing art, design and architecture. Nothing exemplifies their appeal to cool rationality better then Piet Mondrian's Tab- leau II (1921-25). Over many years he refined his painterly language from representational landscapes to abstractions built from just a few essential elements: the straight lines of a right-angled grid, and the three primary colours plus black and white, an austere programme that has influenced painting and sculpture throughout the century.