H. P. Berlage and the Amsterdam School, 1914-1920: Rationalist as Expressionist

After 50 years of neglect, the architecture of the Amsterdam School has been rediscovered. Increasing numbers of articles and exhibitions are evidence of a growing interest in this bizarre architectural movement which flourished briefly after World War I in the Netherlands, fueled by ambitious postwar emotions and subsidized by a sympathetic local government. The sources of this architecture are wide and varied-among them, the Art Nouveau, the English Arts and Crafts Movement, Dutch vernacular architecture, and even Indonesian art-but another, crucial, inspiration was certainly the work of H. P. Berlage. The question of an older architect's influence upon the generation that follows him is a classic topic in art history and, indeed, many writers on the Amsterdam School have discussed Berlage's contribution to the formal concerns of the movement. But little attention has been given to the influence that the work of the younger architects had in turn upon that of Berlage-an intriguing example of a teacher learning from his students. In fact, it appears that between 1914 and 1920, Berlage significantly expanded the metaphysical scope of his art, as an investigation of his work from those years makes clear.