PIET MONDRIAN

December 29, 2016

Grey Tree Flowering

Appletree (1912).

call his disciplined, objective pictures emphasizing their

non-figurative, formal qualities.

While spending World War I in the Netherlands, Mondrian began to adopt a very

strict approach to abstract painting, creating grids without any colour as well as works

showing patterns of coloured squares without lines. He also published important

theoretical writings in Theo van Doesburg's periodical De before returning to Paris

in 1919, where he remained until 1938.

Back in France, Mondrian developed his trademark Neo-Plasticism, characterized

by black lines enclosing areas of grey, white and primary colours. His dynamic,

asymmetric compositions explored the relationship between different sections of the

canvas with a remarkable tautness and discipline. His aim was to reduce painting to its

simplest elements, only using a strictly defined range of lines and shapes, and to

achieve a perfect balance on the canvas. Van Doesburg's insistence on using diagonals

even forced Mondrian to quit De Stijl in 1925, after which he wreaked his own

revenge by creating diamond-shaped paintings that emphasized the horizontal and

vertical lines enclosed by the frames. He also became associated with other abstract

groups, especially Cercle et Carré and, from 1931, its successor, Abstraction-Création.

Mondrian's own studio, of which photographs survive, demonstrated how he

attempted to transfer the principles of abstract art to interior design. Although most

of his own projects were unrealized, he had an important influence on modernist

architects in the 1 930s. This was also a period in which he experimented

systematically with his painting, producing increasingly complicated and dynamic

compositions.

With the approach of World War II, Mondrian left Paris, spending two years in

England, where he became friendly with the abstract artist Ben Nicholson. Finally, in

1940, he moved to New York. His experience of the modern metropolis had an

energizing influence on his late paintings, above all (1 942-3),

which shows a dynamic reaction to the pulsating rhythms of the city.

Book: Great Modern Artists, by: Andy Tuohy with Christopher Masters.