The reduction of form to vertical and horizontal lines and the use of only black, white, and primary colors seen in this work characterized the art and design of the early 20th-century avant-garde Dutch De Stijl group. Although primarily a sculptor, Georges Vantongerloo insisted that his two-dimensional works were equally crucial to his practice. At the time that he made The Function of Lines, he was a member of Abstraction-Création, a Paris-based, international association of artists dedicated to the principles of pure abstraction.
