Oil painting -> List of Painters -> Theo van Doesburg

  Theo van Doesburg

Early Days: Theo van Doesburg was born as Christian Emil Marie Kupper on 30th August 1883 in Utrecht as son of the photographer Wilhelm Kupper and Henrietta Catherina Margadant. After a short training in acting and singing he decided to become a painter. He always regarded his stepfather, Theodorus Doesburg, to be his natural father, so that his first works are signed with Theo Doesburg, to which he later added the insertion "van". His first exhibition was in 1908. He supported his works by copying paintings from the Rijksmuseum and, from 1912 onwards, writing for magazines.

Career:

Although he considered himself to be a modern painter at that time, his early work is in line with the Amsterdam Impressionists and is influenced by Vincent van Gogh, both in style and subject matter. This suddenly changed in 1913 after reading Wassily Kandinsky's Ruckblicke, in which he looks back at his life as a painter from 1903-1913.

It made him realize there was a higher, more spiritual level in painting that originates from the mind rather than from everyday life, and that abstraction is the only logical outcome of this.

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