signed and dated 1952 verso- red copper,glass and brass on panel
32×55 cm Cat Raisonné ill no. 103 Sold
Provenance and literature
Cat Raisonné ill no. 103
About the artist
He was the youngest son of the politician Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis and his fourth wife, Johanna Egberta Godthelp, and lived in Hilversum from 1900 to 1918. Domela was self-taught and initially studied nature. From 1919 to 1923 he lived in Ascona, Switzerland, where he developed a constructivist-abstract style in 1922. In 1923 he moved to Berlin. In the same year he exhibited at the November Group’s exhibition there.
In 1925 he became a member of De Stijl and was thus close friends with Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. In the second half of the 1920s, he worked in a style closely related to that of Mondrian. He began to focus on the development of reliefs: three-dimensional paintings in which the diagonal would play an important role. He also experimented with photomontages and applied them in advertising. From around 1930, he created striking reliefs made of Plexiglas and metal, though always with the oil painting as his starting point. In 1933, he settled permanently in Paris.
In 1936, he took part in the exhibition ‘Cubism and Abstract Art’ at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.