De Stijl

Founded in Leiden, the Netherlands, in 1916, the group known as De Stijl was Europes most important theoretical movement in art and architecture until the mid-1920s, when leadership passed to Germany. In 1916 the architect J. J. P. Oud met the critic and painter Theo van Doesburg and soon introduced him to another young architect, Jan Wils. First forming De Sphinx artists club in Leiden, the three founded, with the railwayman-philosopher Anthony Kok and the painters Piet Mondrian, Bart van der Leck, and expatriate Hungarian Vilmos Husz