Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde

About half-way through this perfectly executed show the central subject, Theo van Doesburg himself, seems to fade out of focus somewhat.

As is natural for chronologically organised exhibitions, the show begins at the beginning, with van Doesburg's early explorations into abstraction; colourful and spiritual, they recall early Kandinsky or Delaunay. Moving on we witness the birth of De Stijl, glimpsing van Doesburg's early visions of precise abstraction as a grazing cow is swiftly reduced to flat planes, then dissolved into an arrangement of floating squares. Other artists are immediately present on the walls - Bart van der Leck, Mondrian, Vantongerloo - but the protagonist remains the centre of attention, with subtly coloured mosaic grids, and joyfully luminous panels of stained glass commanding attention.

But as we reach the parts of the exhibition that examine van Doesburg's fruitful and slightly counter-intuitive liaison with Dada, more and more voices and artists begin to interject, and forceful ones at that. Schwitters, Picabia and Hoch all make their presence felt, and by the time the central rooms are reached there is a whole host of artists to contend with, as big names such as El Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy and Arp share the space with all but unknown figures such as Servranckx, Crotti and Berlewi.

But where is van Doesburg? The answer is, of course, everywhere, and the great diversity of artists on show is powerful testimony to his tireless organising energies and to the wide diffusion of his message. While some may feel that this kind of work is cold and austere, the sheer quantity and universally high quality generate plenty of heat. The breathtaking arrays of modernist journals and the kaleidoscopic geometry of the canvases may be intellectual in conception but they are in no sense heartless.

Van Doesburg was hard at work in a rich and vital seam of the inter-war modernist endeavour, where considerations of a highly theoretical nature were set to work on concrete plans, where film and typography cross-fertilised with painting and interior design, and where a new world still seemed all to play for. This broad and ambitious show mines it well and produces a display of beautifully cut jewels, hard, sharp and sparkling.