Neoplasticism

Neoplasticism (in Dutch "Nieuwe Beelding" - the new plastic art) is an art theory that arose in 1917 around the De Stijl journal. The main representatives of the new image are the artists Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondriaan. They set themselves the goal of purifying the art from elements that they thought did not belong there and tried to determine and apply the elementary (and in their eyes universal) principles of each art form through rational means. Mondrian remained faithful to the new art theory until his death in 1944. Van Doesburg switched to elementarism in 1924.
Assumptions.
According to the neoplasticists, the painter, sculptor, architect, musician, writer, etc. are concerned with the expression or depiction of all facets of life. However, this never happens by chance. Every painting, sculpture, building, piece of music, book, etc. is deliberately created. It is the product of the maker and to a lesser extent what it represents. The events on this painting by Nicolas Poussin never took place. Even the body postures of the figures are not so common in real life. Yet it convinces and forms a harmonious whole. So every artist manipulates reality to produce an aesthetically pleasing, artfully pleasing whole: to create harmony. Even the most realistic painters, such as Johannes Vermeer or Rembrandt van Rijn, used all kinds of artistic means to achieve the greatest possible degree of harmony. The artists of De Stijl called these visual means. However, the artist determines to what extent he allows these visual means to dominate or to stay as close as possible to his subject. In painting and sculpture, and to a lesser extent in architecture, music and literature, there is thus a duality between the idea of the artist and the matter of the world around us.