De Stijil, the Avant-Garde in Modern Europe and the Emergence of the Modern Movement : Café l'Aubette by Theo van Doesburg
Café l'Aubette, Theo van Doesburg, (Strasbourg, France); 1927; De Stijil, the Avant-Garde in Modern Europe and the Emergence of the Modern Movement Concealed behind an 18th century Baroque façade in Strasbourg’s Place Kléber, the Café L’Aubette is a dazzlingly incongruous expression of the 1920s De Stijl movement. Designed by Theo van Doesburg, one of the movement’s founders and leading lights, the Aubette’s minimalist, geometric aesthetic was heavily influenced by the work of contemporary artists such as Piet Mondrian. In designing the café’s interiors, Van Doesburg sought to do more than simply place viewers before a painting; he wanted to envelop them in it. Van Doesburg saw in the cafe the opportunity to implement his own theories of Elementarism. Much like Mondrian, he designed in a purely rectilinear, orthogonal manner; the walls were covered in large grids of brightly colored rectangles. However, Van Doesburg did not rigorously bin...