signed, titled and dated 1977 verso-mixed media sculpture 100 x 75cm
Provenance and literature
Literature:Alain Clairet, Catalogue Raisonné de l'oeuvre en relief, ill. no.258 p.226
About the artist
He was the youngest son of 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. That 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. Around 1930, he created striking reliefs made of Plexiglas and metal, though always with oil painting as his starting point. In 1933, he settled permanently in Paris.
In 1936, he participated in the exhibition “Cubism and Abstract Art” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.