Bart van der Leck (26 November 1876 – 13 November 1958) was a Dutch painter, designer, and ceramicist. With

Theo van Doesburg Theo van Doesburg (; born Christian Emil Marie Küpper; 30 August 1883 – 7 March 1931) was a Dutch painter, writer, poet and architect. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl. He married three times. Personal life Theo van Do ...

and

Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), known after 1911 as Piet Mondrian (, , ), was a Dutch Painting, painter and Theory of art, art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He w ...

he founded the

De Stijl De Stijl (, ; 'The Style') was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 by a group of artists and architects based in Leiden (Theo van Doesburg, Jacobus Oud, J.J.P. Oud), Voorburg (Vilmos Huszár, Jan Wils) and Laren, North Holland, Laren (Piet Mo ...

art movement.

Biography

Van der Leck was born on 26 November 1876, in

Utrecht Utrecht ( ; ; ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city of the Netherlands, as well as the capital and the most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. The ...

. Son of a house painter, he started his career learning how to make

stained glass Stained glass refers to coloured glass as a material or art and architectural works created from it. Although it is traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also include three-dimensio ...

in a shop in Utrecht. An example of his later stained glass work is in the

Kröller-Müller Museum The Kröller-Müller Museum () is a national art museum and sculpture garden, located in the Hoge Veluwe National Park in Otterlo in the Netherlands. The museum, founded by art collector Helene Kröller-Müller within the extensive grounds of ...

. After having met Mondrian and van Doesburg and having founded the Stijl movement with them, his style became completely abstract, as did Mondrian's. But after disagreements with Mondrian his abstract style became based on representational images. His painting Triptych is an example, in which he transformed sketches of a mine in Spain into seemingly abstract shapes. In 1919-1920 he created the interior design for St Hubertus Hunting Lodge, in the

Hoge Veluwe De Hoge Veluwe National Park (; "The High Veluwe") is a Dutch national park in the province of Gelderland near the cities of Ede, Wageningen, Arnhem and Apeldoorn. It is approximately in area, consisting of heathlands, sand dunes, and woodlands ...

estate. The hunting lodge was designed by

Hendrik Petrus Berlage Hendrik Petrus Berlage (; 21 February 185612 August 1934) was a Dutch architect and designer. He is considered one of the fathers of the architecture of the Amsterdam School. Life and work Hendrik Petrus Berlage, son of Nicolaas Willem Ber ...

. 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, he designed a typeface based on this alphabet for the avant garde magazine ''Flax''.

Architype van der Leck Architype van der Leck is a geometric sans-serif typeface, based upon the 1941 typeface designed by Bart van der Leck for the Dutch magazine ''Flax,'' a journal of the De Stijl art movement. The face is geometrically constructed, and based upon ...

, a digital revival of that face by David Quary and

Freda Sack Freda Sack (born 23 September 1951, died 13 February 2019) was a British type designer who began her career at Letraset in 1972, joining as a photographic retoucher. Colleagues attest to her skill at cutting letters from rubylith at Letraset where ...

of The Foundry, was released in 1994. Bart van der Leck claimed to be the father of the

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

movement. In his own words he said: "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 exclaimed: '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... ." Van der Leck died on 13 November 1958, in

Blaricum Blaricum () is a municipality and village in the province of North Holland, the Netherlands. It is part of the region of Gooiland and part of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, Amsterdam Metropolitan Area (Metropoolregio Amsterdam). It is known for ...

Public collections

Among the public collections holding works by the artist are: *

Museum de Fundatie Museum de Fundatie () is a museum for the visual arts in Zwolle, Netherlands. Museum de Fundatie forms part of the Hannema-de Stuers Foundation, to which Kasteel het Nijenhuis in Heino also belongs. Museum de Fundatie possesses a collection of vis ...

Zwolle Zwolle () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Northeastern Netherlands. It is the Capital city, capital of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Overijssel ...

, The Netherlands *

References

Sources

* * * *Haley, Allen. ''Type: Hot Designers Make Cool Fonts.'' Rockport Publishers Inc, Gloucester; 1998. *Hoek, Els, Marleen Blokhuis, Ingrid Goovaerts, Natalie Kamphuys, et al. ''Theo van Doesburg: Oeuvre Catalogus.''

Centraal Museum The Centraal Museum is the main museum in Utrecht (city), Utrecht, Netherlands, founded in 1838. The museum has a wide-ranging collection, mainly of works produced locally. The collection of the paintings by the Northern Mannerist Joachim Wte ...

: 2000. . *Toos van Kooten (ed.). ''Bart van der Leck.'' Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo, 1994 (in Dutch).

External links

Short biography at Codart

Longer biography at Instituut voor Nederlandse GeschiedenisWorks in the Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leck, Bart van der Dutch abstract painters 1876 births 1958 deaths De Stijl Dutch male painters Painters from Utrecht (city) 20th-century Dutch artists 20th-century Dutch painters 20th-century Dutch male artists