From 1905 to 1909 Vantongerloo studied Fine Art at the Fine Art Academies in Antwerp and Brussels. Conscripted into World War I, he was wounded in a gas attack and discharged from the army in 1914. During 1916 he met Theo Van Doesburg and the following year he was a co-signator if the first manifesto of the De Stijl group. Vantongerloo moved to Paris in 1927. In 1930 he joined the Cercle et Carré group in Paris and a year later he was a founding member of the "abstraction-création." group