GEORGES VANTONGERLOO
Amberes, (Belgium) 1886 – París,(France) 1965
After training at the Academies in Antwerp and Brussels, during the years leading up to the First World War he adopted expressive fin-de-siècle styles, close to Pointillist aesthetics in paintings and to Rodin in sculpture, which brought him some success in official circles in Belgium. In 1917 he was in the Netherlands, where contact with the avant-garde –especially with Theo van Doesburg- radically altered his artistic philosophy. The following year he became the first sculptor to sign the De Stijl manifesto. He began to make regular contributions to the group’s magazine and produced his first work in accordance with Neo-Plasticist aesthetics, Constructions dans la sphère (Constructions in the Sphere). Through this approach, which he did not give up until the thirties, he attempted to translate mathematical and physical models into form.
In 1928 he moved to Paris. He designed various models for airports, which were shown in the exhibition Aeronautics and Art held in the French capital in 1930. That year he also exhibited with the Cercle et Carré group.
In 1931 he and Herbin founded the Abstraction-Création group, of which he was vice-president until 1937, when there was a definitive breakaway from the ideas of De Stijl. This was revealed by the gradual introduction of the curved line in his work and the application of a more colourist palette. This new syntax was combined with a recurrence of the theme of the aurora borealis –a metaphor for the abandon of the worlds of mathematics- and the incorporation of new materials for his sculptures, such as wire, glass and Plexiglass. These novelties continued to be stylistic features of his work until his death in 1965.