Georges Vantongerloo


Georges Vantongerloo was a Belgian abstract sculptor and painter and founding member of the De Stijl group.

Life

From 1905 to 1909 Vantongerloo studied Fine Art at the Fine Art Academies in Antwerp and Brussels. Conscripted into World War I, he was wounded in a gas attack and discharged from the army in 1914. In 1916 he met Theo van Doesburg, and the following year he was a co-signator of the first manifesto of the De Stijl group. Vantongerloo moved to Paris in 1927 and began a correspondence with the Belgian Prime Minister, Henri Jaspar, in relation to the design of a bridge over the Scheldt at Antwerp. In 1930 he joined the Cercle et Carré group in Paris, and a year later he was a founding member of Abstraction-Création.
From 1955 he had a long friendship with the Swedish sculptor Gert Marcus.