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Never before the 20th century had the relationship between Art and Design, between imagination and technology, and between nature and science been so close. Just think of the color choices of artists and designers to understand why the gap between these two traditionally opposite worlds became thinner.
As often happens in history, it was a cultural movement to start such a transformation. The art movement De Stijl (literally The Style in Dutch) founded in the Netherlands in 1916 by architect Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) together with the Dutch-born painter Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), lies perhaps at the origin of this avant-garde vision: art is proposed as a search for a balanced relationship between the universal and the individual through the use of elementary forms and primary colors accompanied by black lines and white background.
An approach referred to as neo-plasticism that turns out to be fundamental to developments in modern architecture and design, and which is echoed immediately on the heels of the Weimar art school, the famous Bauhaus (house of construction), with its innovative search for an intrinsic collaboration between the various forms of art: "Let us all give life together to the new construction of the future in which everything - architecture, sculpture and painting- will be destined to merge." said Walter Gropius.
But how is this possible? And how to remain consistent in this mixture of disciplines? Simple: by staying true to simple lines and absolute colors - the primary ones: magenta, yellow and blue. These colors become the means of unifying and identifying this effort toward the universal purism that was the defining element not only of the 1920s and 1930s, but of almost the entire century.
One of the greatest exponents of this abstract and pure art of the early 1900s was certainly Piet Mondrian with his palette made only of primary colors and straight, orthogonal black lines. In this way apparent reality becomes idealized, the very symbol of creative activity. There are many designers and stylists who have been fascinated by the works of the Dutch master. The pure colors and essential geometric style have inspired the most varied interpretations over time.
The first to apply the principles behind Mondrian's paintings to three dimensions was fellow architect Gerrit Rietveld. He starts from orthogonality of lines and primary colors to design architecture and furniture capable of materializing Mondrian's paintings. One of the best known design chairs is the Red and Blue Chair of 1918, almost a three-dimensional work of Mondrian's, born from the faithful application of the theories of neoplasticism.
Le Corbusier, the father of modernism, also gives ample space to primary colors, see for example his Maison De L'Homme (Zurich - 1963/67). His words help us explain why artists, designers and architects of his time chose these pure colors to pursue their creative philosophy: “Color is intimately attached to our being; each one of us has perhaps their color; if we often ignore it our instincts cannot be mistaken”.
