Dutch avant-garde painter, poet and writer, the founder of De Stijl movement.
He was the seventh and last child of Henrietta Catharina Margadant (4 November 1844, Rotterdam – 26 October 1920, Haarlem) and the German photographer Wilhelm Küpper (2 October 1838, Bonn – 7 March 1892, Köln). After his death, his mother married the watchmaker Theodorus Doesburg (28 June 1863, Montfoort – ca 1912 Amsterdam) on 19 November 1893 in Amsterdam. Theo would adopt his stepfathers name, and changed it in 1912 in Van Doesburg. Most biographers speculate that Doesburg was actually his own father, as his mother and elder siblings had moved in with Doesburg in Amsterdam since September 1884, after his official father had left the family and moved to Germany (1884).
Though he liked to study and read, he was to restless to finish his secondary education. After a short training in acting and singing at the School voor Vocale en Dramatische Kunst of Cateau Esserhe, he decided to become a painter and writer on art. He had some lessons from Adri Grootens, but became mainly an autodidact.
In 1903 he met the theosophic painter and poet Agnita Henrica Feis (10 februari 1881, Rotterdam – 9 November 1944, Amsterdam). In 1906 he recovered from a severe depression in Zandvoort. In 1907 he left home, as his parents were opposed to his relation with Feis and his wish to become an artist. They collaborated a lot and married 4 May 1910. In 1914, during Van Doesburg mobilisation as a sergeant, he felt in love with Lena Milius (24 January 1889, Zwolle – 1968). He published the to Lena dedicated poem “Mijne liefde…” on 30 January 1915 in De Eenheid. He divorced 11 May 1917 from Feis. During that period he heard of the horrors of WWI from the Belgian refugees and lost his faith in humanity. On 30 May 1917 he married Lena. They divorced 31 January 1923. He never had children.
In 1908 he had his first exhibition, a year after he had left home. Summer 1912 he started writing as an art critc. In this way, he came into contact with the work of modernists like Picasso, Braque and Kandinsky. Kandinsky’s Rückblicke and Feis’ theosophy changed his view on life and art. He felt that he like Kandinsky needed to strive for “Das Geistige in der Kunst”, but it took him years to find a format for it. Probably also because he was called to arms during WW1 to protect the neutral Dutch border. During those years, his art was more expressionistic. Piet Mondriaan, who he first met 6 February 1916, changed this. That year he broke with expressionism.
On 24 March 1916 he erected with Erich Wichman, Janus de Winter, Lou Saalborn the art group “De Anderen”(the Other), who exhibited from May to June with the artdealer Herman d’Audretsch in Den Haag. Some works were sold to Helene Kröller-Müller and he was asked to make glass in lead designs by architect J.J.P. Oud (Aug 1916). Vilmos Huszár helped him with it. With Oud he erected on 31 May 1916 De Sphinx.
June 1917 Mondriaan and Van Doesburg coined the term “Nieuwe Beelding” or Neoplasticism, for their new abstract art style, that should be as pure and rational as possible. Not only painters and sculptors, but also architects (Oud, Wils) and designers (Rietveld) were influenced by it. On 30 November 1918 he published Manifest I of De Stijl (The Style).
The Magazine De Stijl started October 1917. Doesburg was the main editor . The periodical got the contributions from Alexander Archipenko, H.P. Berlage, Dop Bles, Frits van Hengelaar, Vilmos Huszar, Anthony Kok, Bart van der Leck, Piet Mondriaan, J.J.P. Oud, Pablo Picasso, Jan Toorop, Erich Wichman, Van ‘t Hoff, Vantongerloo and Jan Wils
He travelled a lot to meet artists, give lectures and to exhibit. He became the ambassador of De Stijl movement. In 1922 he met Walter Gropius in Weimar to try to become a Bauhaus master. In 1923 he moved to Paris, with musician and dancer Nelly van Moorsel (27 July 1899, Den Haag – 1 October 1975, Meudon), who became his third wife after a free marriage on 24 November 1928.
In 1922 he met the Russian artist El Lissitzky, a constructivist. On 26 May 1922 he erected with Hans Richter, Lissitzky, Karl Peter Röhl, Werner Graeff and Cornelis van Eesteren, the Internationale Fraktion der Konstruktivisten (IFdK) in Weimar. With Kurt Schwitters, Nelly van Moorsel and Vilmos Huszár, he introduced Dada in the Netherlands, Nelly playing Satie.
After his marriage with Nelly (1928), they settled December 1930 in the modernistic VanDoesburg huis in Meudon. The house at 29, rue Charles Infroit is now in the hands of the Dutch state, who rents it to artists studying in France.
Because of his asthma, they moved end February 1931 to Davos. On 7 March 1931 he died unexpectedly of an heart attack during an asthmatic exacerbation.

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