History of painting group's theories. Next to van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian, Vilmos Huszár, and Bart van der Leck, and the architects Gerrit Rietveld, Robert van 't Hoff, and J. J. P. Oud. The artistic philosophy that formed a basis for the group's work is known as "neoplasticism" — the new plastic art (or "Nieuwe Beelding" in Dutch). Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to the vertical
Jef Van der Veken later restorer deceptively had added new elements such as the background and the figure of the angel. The suspicion is that this restorer was Jef Van der Veken. The conclusion of the recent scientific findings is that both Van der Veken and Renders appear to have engaged in intentional art forgery. Since these revelations, all the works that had belonged to the Renders Collection or had been handled by Van der Veken and even his son-in-law Albert Philippot, many of which hang in major museums in Belgium and abroad, are viewed with suspicion. Jef Van der Veken Jef Van der