Van der Leck was for a time van Doesburg’s lieutenant in de Stijl (which in retrospect looks more a coherent movement than the one-man-bandwagon it really was), though disagreements took their toll, as they also did between van der Leck and Mondrian. He worked with Berlage, but the arrangement (foisted on both) suited neither. Oud, van Doesburg and he formed ‘de Sphinx’ prior to their involvement in de Stijl. Rietveld, more temperamentally similar than other de Stijl colleagues, was a friend. Artistic poverty was not to van der Leck’s taste — following his fellow-student van Dongen to Paris, he only lasted 2 weeks before returning home.