De Stijl turns 100 – but still cannot touch the greats of abstract act

Piet Mondrian and the rest of the De Stijl movement were admirable idealists, but their work is constipated compared with the wild moods of their American peers

Modern art centenaries are piling up. There are (at least) three big ones this year: the Russian revolution with its impact on the avant garde, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, and the Dutch art and design movement De Stijl, founded by Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg in 1917.

De Stijl is the most colourful – if you like red, yellow and blue. The celebrations in the Netherlands include a giant Mondrian on The Hague’s town hall, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam exploring De Stijl’s influence on contemporary artists such as Isa Genzken and The Hague’s Gemeentemuseum showing all 300 of its Mondrians in a colossal retrospective.

Related: Dutch city celebrates Mondrian with sky-high replica on city hall

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