Piet Mondrian

(1872-1944)

Originally named Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, Mondrian was born on March 7, 1872 in Amserfoort, The Netherlands. He was the second child of Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, Sr. who was a headmaster of a Calvinist elementary school in Amserfoort. It was both his father and his uncle, Frits Mondrian who assisted and trained him when he began to study drawing in the late 1880’s. Although Mondrian intended to become a painter his family pursued him to acquire a degree in education. By the time he was in early 20’s Piet Mondrian was qualified to teach drawing in secondary schools. However, instead of searching for a career as an instructor Mondrian attended painting lessons and them moved to Amsterdam and registered in the Amsterdam Academy of Fine Arts. He became a member of the art association Kunstlifde I Utrecht, where, in 1893, his first paintings were exhibited. He studied in the academy form 1892 to 1895 and then began to paint on his own.

Up through 1907, Mondrian’s paintings followed an effective trend of art in The Netherlands. His paintings were usually calm landscapes painted with delicate colors, and picturesque lighting, and his subjects were usually in the meadows and pastures around Amsterdam. In 1903 Mondrian gained an artistic reputation when he won the Willink van Collem Prize for a still life painting. During the same year Mondrian visited one of his friends in Belgium. There, the beauty of the landscape had a profound influence on him. He decided to remain in Belgium and did not returned to Amsterdam until 1905, his art having visibly changed. He no longer strove to grasp the picturesque lighting as before; instead his paintings had more of rhythmic and compositional structure to them. Yet his paintings still seemed remain within the traditional framework of contemporary Dutch art.

Jan Toorop led Mondrian to begin experimenting with brighter, more vibrant colors in 1908. Toorop had led the Luminist movement in The Netherlands and mastered Diviosionalism, a movement that emphasized the use of the three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. Mondrian began to do the same by also limiting his use of color to the three basics. His Luminist works were exhibited in a group show at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1909, which firmly established him among the Dutch individualist painters.

In 1911 Mondrian saw, for the first time, the Cubist works of Georges Braque and Pable Picasso in Amsterdam. He was so deeply amazed by their works that he moved to Paris in 1912. In Paris he found a home in the Montparnasse district and almost immediately began to adjust the principles of Cubism to his own use. He produced many analytical series such as “Trees” (1912-1913) and “Scaffoldings” (1912=1914). He progressively moved towards increased abstraction, which led him to a style of only vertical and horizontal brushstrokes.

Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, van der Leck, and Vilmos Huszar together founded the art magazine and movement of De Stijl (the style) in 1917. Through De Stijl, Mondrian developed his own theories of a new art form called neplasticism. He believed that art should not concern itself with reproducing images of real objects but instead focus on their underlying nature. He maintained the belief that a canvas should contain only basic elements such as primary colors, straight lines, and right angles. His “Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue” was composed solely of a few black lines and a well-balanced block of color. This gave his painting a sense of proportionality like no other and created a prodigious effect with its limitations.

Mondrian worked and lived in London for two years, but because of the bombardment of the city he was forced to flee to New York City. There his style became freer and more rhythmic. He broke away from the austere patterns of black lines and instead adopted lively chain-linked patterns of bright colors. His works “Broadway Boogie Woogie” and “New York City I,” which were exhibited in 1943-1944 express this new vivacity. Inspired by his own optimism, Mondrian began his “Victory Boogie Woogie” in 1943, but was unfortunately unable to complete it by the time of his death on February 1, 1944.

By the early 20th century, the European powers had establiushed colonial empires throughout most of the world. They completed a process that had begun in the Renaissance. Africa was split up between Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Britain ruled India in Asia, the Dutch ruled Indonesia, and the French ruled Indochina. Japan was rising as a new and formidable Pacific power that would stake its claims to empire in the 1930s. The devastation of World War I brought widespread misery, social disruption, and economic collapse. The Great Depression of the 1930s was a consequence of it. Europe collapsed, especially Germany. This leads to World War II. War brought misery.