De Stijl was international in its outlook: in contact with the Bauhaus and the Russian Constructivists, it helped to create the ideology and formal language of modernism.

Mondrian is De Stijls best-known artist, while Oud, Wils, Huszr and Rietveld were its major architects and designers. Their aim was an objective art concerned with universal values, expressed in primary geometric forms and pure colours. In this book, De Stijl is reassessed by Paul Overy in the light of Post-modernist debates and documentary material only recently made available.