De Stijl, the Bauhaus and modern form

After the First World War designers wanted to build a new world: straight, honest, industrial and accessible to all.

De Stijl in the Netherlands, with Piet Mondrian and Gerrit Rietveld, sought to reduce everything to right angles and primary colours. Rietveld's Red and Blue Chair is a three-dimensional Mondrian.

The Bauhaus was founded in Weimar in 1919 by the architect Walter Gropius. The school united art, craft and industry, and teachers such as Kandinsky, Klee, Moholy-Nagy and Marcel Breuer taught there. Marianne Brandt made teapots and lamps that became classics.

In the Soviet Union the Constructivists designed posters, textiles and workers' clubs for the revolution. What they all shared was the belief that form should follow function and that design could improve society.