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Wies at Van Doesburg house (fall 2023)
In memoriam Wies van Moorsel (1935 – 2024)
In late July, Wies van Moorsel died at the age of 88. Wies – art historian, writer and feminist – was very dear to us; her name is inextricably linked to the history and future of the Van Doesburg house.
Wies was sole heir to the estate of Nelly van Doesburg, a sister of her father. When Nelly died in 1975, the artist house designed by Theo van Doesburg in the late 1920s also came into Wies’ possession. Together with her husband Jean Leering, she donated the house, collection and archive of Nelly and Theo van Doesburg to the Dutch state in 1981. In the same year, the Van Doesburg House was granted monument status and has been managed by our foundation ever since.
The other part of the bequest – the works, archives and books of Theo van Doesburg – was placed with the Dienst Verspreide Rijkscollecties (now Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed). Wies stipulated that most of the art collection was given on loan to three museums: Centraal Museum in Utrecht, De Lakenhal in Leiden and Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo; the architectural drawings ended up at the Nederlands Documentatiecentrum voor de Bouwkunst (now New Institute in Rotterdam). Van Doesburg’s library and archive, including documentation of the magazine De Stijl, are housed at the RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History.
For the generous donation, Wies received from the Dutch state the Museum Medal, the recognition for merit for public collections. The transfer of the artworks was celebrated with a major exhibition in 1983 at the Haags Gemeentemuseum (now Kunstmuseum) and the publication ‘Theo van Doesburg 1883-1931: Een documentaire op basis van het material uit de Schenking Van Moorsel’ (A documentary based on material from the Van Moorsel Donation) for which Wies and Jean wrote the introduction.
Whereas Van Doesburg was a querulant and provocateur, Wies was above all a connector. At the time of the donation, Wies and Jean earmarked the house as an artist residency for artists working in the fields in which Nelly and Theo were active – basically all art forms: music and other performing arts, architecture, film, literature, poetry, art and design. Wies had the same broad interests and was often in contact with the residents in the years that followed. As an advisor, Wies assisted the board of our foundation for many years. She was present at all meetings and until the last meeting last spring she surprised all present with her intellectual sharpness and alertness.
Educated as an art historian, Wies possessed qualities that proved very valuable to art and the art world. She had an enormous love for the field of art history and was, among other things, a lecturer at the Art History Institute in Amsterdam, where she inspired many students. In 1992, she obtained her doctorate with the dissertation ‘Contact en controle. Over het vrouwbeeld van de stichting Goed Wonen’ in which she concluded that although the Good Housing Foundation in the Netherlands had a modern view of home furnishing, the role of women was still that of housewives.
The research into ‘Goed Wonen’ did not come out of the blue. Wies was active in the women’s movement and was part of the network ‘Vrouwen, bouwen en wonen’ (Women, building and living) founded in 1983, whose archive is in the New Institute’s collection. When its predecessor, the Netherlands Architecture Institute, was founded, Wies wrote an open letter together with Marga Kuperus: ‘Recently, the Architecture Institute, albeit in a temporary space, has become permanent. We are very pleased about this. However, we are less enthusiastic about the complete absence of women in architecture and urbanism in your programming published to date.’ Typical Wies, clear, critical and no way to get in between. But also typically Wies is that she then addressed this lack of attention to women architects and urban planners herself. She wrote a publication on Cora Nicolaï-Chaillet, interior architect and residential pedagogue, and with Dorothee Segaar-Höweler co-authored the book ‘Enrico Hartsuyker en Luzia Hartsuyker-Curjel ‘Modellen voor nieuwe woonvormen’ (Models for new living forms) published in 2008.
In 2000, Wies published a loving portrayal of the life of her fashionable aunt: ‘Nelly van Doesburg (1899-1975). De doorsnee is mij niet genoeg’ (The average is not enough for me). She attended gatherings in the Netherlands and abroad that touched on Van Doesburg or De Stijl. Researchers, exhibition makers, documentary makers, they all ended up with Wies. Her commitment was boundless, always willing to share the story of the van Doesburg house and her knowledge of the avant-garde. But, and this is exceptional, not by rehashing the same story over and over again, but each time from an angle that was relevant to the person she shared it with.
Her willingness to share and give had far-reaching consequences. Recently, the New Institute acquired an interior model by Van Doesburg and De Lakenhal has been able to create exhibitions that would have been unthinkable without Wies’s efforts. The publication ‘Peggy, Nelly: Peggy Guggenheim en Nelly van Doesburg, voorvechtsters van De Stijl’ (advocates of De Stijl) (2017) by Doris Wintgens is also indebted to Wies.
Wies has kept the Van Doesburg house alive as a sanctuary of the arts, and she herself will live on. Obviously in our cherished memories of her, but above all in her social commitment and activism for the arts, in her work, publications and the living immaterial heritage par excellence: the sharing of knowledge that is now passed on again by others, incorporated into new compositions or works. In doing so, Wies, with her tireless efforts and vigorous will, has ensured that new generations can now continue to follow in her footsteps in the legacy of Nelly and Theo van Doesburg.
Wies on receiving the biography about Theo van Doesburg titled ‘Ik sta helemaal alleen’ (I am all alone) by Hans Renders and Sjoerd van Faassen (fall 2022)
