César Domela

Rolf Weinberg, Winterthur & Zurich
Annely Juda Fine Art, London
Private Collection, France (acquired from the above; sale: Christie's, Amsterdam, 31 May 2005, lot 185)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Berlin, Nationalgalerie, Tendenzen der Zwanziger Jahre, 1977
London, British Council, Council of Europe Exhibition (Trends of the Twenties), 1977, no. 4
Winterthur, Kunstmuseum, Rot konstruiert und Super Table. Eine Schweizer Sammlung moderner Kunst 1909-1939, 1980
Paris, Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris; Grenoble, Musée de Grenoble, Domela, 65 ans d’abstraction, 1987, no. 16, illustrated in the catalogue
New York, Rachel Adler Gallery, Cercle et Carré- Thoughts for the 1930s, 1990, no. 7, illustrated in the catalogue
The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, 2010 - 2014 (on loan)

Alain Clairet, Catalogue raisonne de l'oeuvre de César Domela Nieuwenhuis (peintures, reliefs, sculptures), Paris, 1978, no. 21, p. 74, illustrated (with incorrect measurements)

The following condition report has been provided by Hamish Dewar Ltd, 13 & 14 Mason's Yard, London SW1Y 6BU: UNCONDITIONAL AND WITHOUT PREJUDICE Structural Condition The canvas is unlined on what would certainly appear to be the original keyed wooden stretcher. The canvas is inscribed on the reverse. There are slight and entirely stable stretcher-bar lines. Paint surface The paint surface has a rather uneven surface coating and could benefit from the application of a very thin matt varnish and would also benefit from surface cleaning. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows one small spot of retouching in the white background, just below the centre of the composition and a thin vertical line on the right vertical stretcher bar line. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in very good and stable condition and should respond well to surface cleaning.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Painted in 1926, shortly after his encounter with the De Stijl group in 1924, Composition Néo-Plastique is one of César Domela's most significant works. Domela's output in the early twenties was small, and only very few of his paintings from this period remain in private hands.

Domela was one of the most innovative and influential artists working in Europe during the mid-twentieth century. Initially becoming a prominent member of the De Stijl group with Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, Domela’s approach eventually evolved into three dimensional abstraction.

Domela was introduced to van Doesburg and Mondrian in Paris by his friend, the sculptor Henri Laurens. Domela’s own theories on the use of geometrical forms and abstraction in art interested Mondrian and Doesburg, and they invited the young artist to join their group. De Stijl had been founded by Mondrian, van Doesburg, Bart van der Leck and Vilmos Huszar in 1917, with the ambition of forging a new pictorial language, independent from figurative representation and centred on universal principles: the use of straight lines, squared angles and neutral or primary colours.

De Stijl advocated the complete rejection of visually perceived reality as subject matter and the restriction of the pictorial language to its most basic elements. In the movement's journal Mondrian laid out his therory that a painting no longer had to begin from an abstract view of nature, rather a painting could emerge out of purely abstract rules of geometry and colour. He named this new style of painting ‘Neoplasticism’.

In its elements,Composition néo-plastique conforms to the criteria defining De Stijl's idea of painting: Domela divided the space of the canvas using black lines meeting at perpendicular angles, articulating on its surface a constructed asymmetry. The palette is restricted to blue,  yellow and grey, disrupting the black and white on which the picture is structured. Although perpendicular, however, the lines in Composition néo-plastique are diagonals, placing this work within the theoretical debate which separated Van Doesburg and Mondrian in 1924, the very year Domela joined De Stijl. While Mondrian firmly believed in the absolute harmonic value of horizontal and vertical lines (fig. 2), Van Doesburg was of the opinion that diagonals, crossing at right angles, brought a necessary dynamic element to the composition, counterbalancing the stability of perpendicular lines (fig. 3).

Although embracing Van Doesburg's ideas, Composition néo-plastique also bears testimony to Domela's determinedly independent approach. While, according to Van Doesburg, diagonals had to be introduced in the picture plane at forty-five degree, Domela opted for a more instinctive compositional principle, which would eventually lead him to explore in his later works curved lines and the three dimensional relief works. Cutting the sides of the canvas at different angles, the diagonals in Composition néo-plastique introduce a dynamic effect to the composition, adding a vivid sense of movement to its rigorous geometric structure.

Domela was born in Amsterdam in 1900, the youngest son of the influential socialist politician Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis. Following his father's death, aged nineteen, Domela travelled to Italy and Switzerland, where he came into contact with the avant-garde and found his vocation as an artist. Self-taught, Domela quickly passed from the synthetic cubism of his early works to geometrical paintings. He increasingly abstracted the representational element of his compositions and focused more and more on the opposition of lines and the interaction between vertical and horizontal planes. In 1924 he participated in the radical November Gruppe in Berlin. He had his first one man show in The Hague at Galeria d’Audretsch in 1924 and exhibited with the avant-garde group Société Anonyme in New York in 1926. Domela moved to Berlin in 1927 where he became a member of the Abstracts of Hannover and associated with members of the Bauhaus, most notably Kurt Schwitters, László Moholy-Nagy and Wassily Kandinsky. Concerned by the rise of Fascism in Germany Domela and his wife Ruth moved to Paris in 1933. There, Domela became a prominent member of the Abstraction-Creation group and began publishing the journal Plastica with Jean Arp and Sophie Tauber.  From the 1930s onwards he concentrated on three-dimensional reliefs and photomontages.