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Art Appreciation
PIET MONDRIANAN
“A MONDRIAN ABSTRACT IS THE MOST COMPACT IMAGINABLE PICTORIAL HARMONY, THE MOST SELF
SUFFICIENT OF PAINTED SURFACES.” David Sylvester
BY
Pamintuan, Aira Krystel
Yang, Jae Haek
Piet Mondrian was a Dutch painter and an important contributor to the De Stijl
art movement. Mondrian's paintings exhibit a complexity that contradict their apparent
simplicity. The nonrepresentational paintings for which he is best known consist of
rectangular forms of red, yellow, blue, or black, separated by thick, black, rectilinear
lines.
Netherlands 18721912 Born at Amersfoort in The Netherlands as Pieter Cornelis
Mondriaan, he began his career as a teacher in primary education, but also practiced painting.
Most of his work from this period is naturalistic or impressionistic, consisting largely of
landscapes. These pastoral images of his native Holland depict windmills, fields, and rivers.
They were representational and illustrated the influence that various artistic movements had on
Mondrian, including pointillism and the vivid colors of fauvism.
Mondriaan's art also related to his spiritual and philosophical studies. In 1908, he became
interested in the theosophical movement launched by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in the late 19th
century. Blavatsky believed that it was possible to attain a knowledge of nature more profound
than that provided by empirical means, and much of Mondriaan's work for the rest of his life
was inspired by his search for that spiritual knowledge.
Netherlands 19141919
In 1913, Mondrian began to fuse his art and his theosophical studies into a theory that
signaled his final break from representational painting.
Mondrian’s best and most oftenquoted expression of this theory comes from a letter he
wrote to H. P. Bremmer in 1914:
"I construct lines and color combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost
awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an
urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything
from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things…
I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with
calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if
necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true."
Paris 19191938
When the war ended in 1919, Mondrian returned to France, where he would remain until 1938.
Paris had an atmosphere of artistic innovation and intellectual freedom that enabled Mondrian
to embrace an art of pure abstraction for the rest of his life. He began producing gridbased
paintings in late 1919, and in 1920, the style for which he came to be renowned began to appear.
Mondrian’s paintings are not composed of perfectly flat planes of color, as one might expect.
Brush strokes are evident throughout, although they are subtle, and the artist appears to have
used different techniques for the various elements.
The black lines are the flattest elements, with the least amount of depth. The colored forms have
the most obvious brush strokes, all running in one direction. Most interesting, however, are the
white forms, which have been painted in layers, using brush strokes running in different
directions.
London & New York 19381944
In September 1938, Mondrian left Paris in the face of advancing fascism and moved to
London. After the Netherlands were invaded and Paris fell in 1940, he left London for
New York City, where he would remain until his death.
Mondrian’s final works, "Broadway Boogie Woogie" (19423) and the unfinished
"Victory Boogie Woogie" (19424), replace the solid lines with lines created from tiny
adjoining rectangles of color, created in part using small pieces of paper tape in various
colors. Mondrian’s works of the 1920s and 1930s are bright, lively paintings, reflecting
the upbeat music that inspired them and the city in which they were made.
The apparent simplicity of Mondrian's most wellknown works have led some people to
believe that anyone, even a child, could paint them. However, careful study of
Mondrian's neoplastic compositions makes it clear that they are extremely difficult to
reproduce with the same effect that he generated. His works are the culmination of a
decadeslong conceptual journey through modern art that involved experimentation
with many different styles and movements. Mondrian's reductionist style continues to
inspire the art, fashion, advertising, and design worlds. Although he was a fine artist
(not a commercial artist), Mondrian is considered the father of advertising design,
because of the widespread and continued adoption of his grid style as a basic structure
of graphic design layout.
References
• Wikipedia about Piet Mondrain (the free encyclopedia. www.wikipedia.com).
• Schapiro, Mondrian: On the Humanity of Abstract Painting (George Braziller 1995).
• Bax, Marty. Complete Mondrian. Hampshire: Lund Humphries, 2001.
• Faerna, José María, ed. Mondrian: Great Modern Masters. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995.
• Joosten, Joop J. and Welsh, Robert P. Piet Mondrian: Catalogue Raisonné. New York: Harry N.
Abrams, 1998.
• Mondrian, Piet, Harry Holtzman, ed., and Martin S. James, ed. The New Art – The New Life: The
Collected Writings of Piet Mondrian. New York: Da Capo Press, 1993.
Composition No. 10
19391942
Oil on canvas
31 1/2 x 28 3/4 in. (80 x 73 cm)
Private collection
Broadway Boogie Woogie
19421943
Oil on canvas
50 x 50 in. (127 x 127 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
New York City
194142
Oil on canvas
119 x 114 cm (46 7/8 x 44 7/8 in)
Musee national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Composition with Blue, Yellow, Black, and Red
1922
Oil on canvas
53 x 54 cm (20 7/8 x 21 1/4 in)
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgartart
Lozenge Composition with Red, Black, Blue, and Yellow
1925
Oil on canvas
77 x 77 cm (30 3/8 x 30 3/8 in.)
vertical axis 108 cm (42 1/2 in.)
Private collections