Background
Bart van der Leck was born on November 26, 1876 in Utrecht, Netherlands. The son of a house painter.
Bart van der Leck was born on November 26, 1876 in Utrecht, Netherlands. The son of a house painter.
Bart van der Leck studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam since 1898.
Van der Leck's career began at 14 as an apprentice in a glass workshop in Utrecht and continued eight years in stained glass studios. An example of his later stained glass work is in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Hoge Veluwe, Netherlands.
In 1916 Van der Leck moved to Laren, where he completed two of the most important paintings of his entire career: "The Tempest" (1916) and "Work at the docks".
In Laren he met Piet Mondrian and began to paint abstract compositions comprising simple, basic shapes in primary colors. But after disagreements with Mondrian his abstract style became based on representational images. His painting "Tryptich" is an example, in which he transformed sketches of a mine in Spain into seemingly abstract shapes.
Bart van der Leck co-founded the "De Stijl art" journal in 1917 with Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg.
In 1919-1920 Bart van der Leck created the interior design for St Hubertus Hunting Lodge, in the Hoge Veluwe estate. The hunting lodge was designed by Hendrik Petrus Berlage. In 1930 he was commissioned by Jo de Leeuw, owner of the prestigious Dutch department store Metz & Co. to design interiors, window packaging, branding and advertising. For these print materials van der Leck developed a rectilinear, geometrically constructed alphabet. In 1941 Bart van der Leck designed a typeface based on this alphabet for the avant garde magazine Flax.
He continued to work on abstract compositions for the rest of his life, finally settling in Blaricum in Noord-Holland, where he died peacefully on November 13, 1958, two weeks before his 82nd birthday.
The Tempest
Composition No. 4 (Leaving The Factory)
Aaronskelken; arums
Billy-Goat
Fish
Untitled
Still Life
A girl playing the flute with goat
Young Goat
Still life (Bowl with apples)
Lamb
Abstract Composition
Vrouw met koe (Woman with Cow)
Woman and Cow
Composition
Composition with one grey stripe
Abstract composition
Quotations: "Mondrian came to my place one day with Doesburg, whom I had never seen before. When Doesburg noticed an abstract painting right on the easel, he exlaimed: 'If that is to be the painting of the future, may I be hanged right now!' Well, a few months later, he was painting in precisely that manner. That's the sort of person Doesburg was. No ideas of his own. And a cheat in bargain..."
Bart van der Leck was one of the founders of the De Stijl art movement, although he refused to sign the movement’s first manifesto and left the group just one year later.