César Domela

César Domela-Nieuwenhuis, whose father was politically very involved in the far left, first considered a career as an ethnologist. In 1918, after graduating, he began to draw. When his father died, he went into exile in Ascona, taking the book Tao-tö-king. The passion he nurtures for Lao-Tseu already seems to announce oriental thought in his later work. From 1921, Domela painted landscapes quite close to synthetic cubism and produced photomontages. He left to exhibit in Berlin in 1923 for the first time with the group Novembergruppe. He left Berlin for Paris the same year, and the following year met Piet Mondrian and Theo Van Doesburg, joined De Stijl and painted his first abstract paintings. In 1925, he took part in the great exhibition “The Art of Today” and left for Amsterdam. There followed a series of meetings with artists of the 20th century (Arp, Kandinsky, Hausmann, Ernst, Delaunay…), group exhibitions, participation in magazines such as Cercle and Carré, personal exhibitions - United States, France… César Domela is an essential artist of the last century.