ABSTRACT
The membership of the Dutch avant-garde circle of De Stijl is recognized as an exclusively male affair. However, there was a remarkable group of women closely connected to the movement. Among them were Nelly van Doesburg (Cupera), a Dada musician, dancer, artist, and wife of the founder of De Stijl, Theo van Doesburg; Mathilda (Til) Brugman, a poet, linguist, and author; and Marjorie Jewel (Marlow) Moss, a British constructivist artist who worked in painting and sculpture. The fact that Han (Johanna Erna Else) Schröder (1918–1992), a Dutch architect and educator, also belongs to that group is largely unknown. The daughter of Truus Schröder, the commissioner and co-designer of the Rietveld-Schröder House, a UNESCO World Heritage Site built in 1924 in Utrecht, she was one of the first women to practice architecture in the Netherlands. During the 1960s—1980s, she taught architecture and interior design at major universities in the United States and retired as professor emerita. The life and work of this exceptional forerunner in Dutch and American architectural history is to be emphasized in fundamental readings on the built environment.
