Who was Piet Mondrian?
Piet Mondrian is considered one of the pioneers of the artistic movement known as De Stijl, which was characterized by the use of basic geometric shapes, such as straight lines, squares and rectangles, and primary colors. Throughout his career, he developed his abstract style, which became increasingly simplified and geometric, as he believed that art should reflect the universal laws of harmony and balance, and that geometry was the ideal language to convey these ideas. Some of his most famous works include the series of paintings entitled "Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow" and "Composition in Black and White". Piet Mondrian had a great influence on the development of abstract art and modern design, his work being relevant and inspiring for many artists and designers.
Artistic Journey of Piet Mondrian
Piet Mondrian was born in Amersfoort, Holland, in 1872, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam, where he received a traditional academic training in painting. He began his career as a teacher in primary school, while continuing to paint. Most of his work from this period is naturalistic or impressionistic, consisting mainly of landscapes. These pastoral images of his native country depict windmills, fields and rivers, initially in the Dutch Impressionist style of the Hague School and later in a variety of styles and techniques that attest to his quest for a personal style. These paintings are representative of and illustrate the influence that various artistic movements had on Mondrian, including pointillism and the vivid colors of Fauvism.
The influence of Cubism on the art of Piet Mondrian
If at the beginning of his career, Piet Mondrian was a figurative and impressionist painter, already in the mid-1910s, he began to be interested in abstract and geometric art. In 1911, Piet Mondrian moved to Paris and changed his name, removing an "a" from "Mondriaan", to emphasize his departure from Holland and his integration into the Parisian avant-garde. In Paris, the influence of the Cubist style of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque appeared almost immediately in Mondrian's work, lasting from 1912 to 1917. Unlike the Cubists, Mondrian consolidated his painting with his spiritual quests, and in 1913 he began to fuse his art and his theosophical studies into a theory that marked his final break with representative painting.
De Stijl and Neo-Plasticism
In 1914, while Piet Mondrian was visiting the Netherlands, World War I broke out, forcing him to remain there for the duration of the conflict. During this period, he stayed at the artists' colony of Laren, where he met Bart van der Leck and Theo van Doesburg, both on personal journeys into abstraction. Van der Leck's use of only primary colors in his art greatly influenced Piet Mondrian. With Van Doesburg, Mondrian founded De Stijl (The Style), a magazine of the De Stijl Group, in which he first published essays defining his theory, which he called neoplasticism. Piet Mondrian published "De Nieuwe Beelding in de schilderkunst" ("The New Plastic in Painting"), in twelve chapters during 1917 and 1918, to express his artistic theory in writing.
Piet Mondrian's artistic style
Over the next two decades, Piet Mondrian methodically developed his style, in which he simply concentrated on his horizontal and vertical black lines, forming squares and rectangles filled with primary tones. When World War I ended in 1918, Mondrian returned to France, where he would remain until 1938. Immersed in the post-war Parisian culture of artistic innovation, he flourished and fully embraced the art of pure abstraction rest.
In early paintings of this style, the lines outlining the rectangular shapes are relatively thin and are gray, not black. Lines also tend to disappear as they get closer to the edge of the painting, rather than stopping abruptly. The shapes themselves, smaller and more numerous than in later paintings, are filled with primary colors, black or gray, and almost all are in color; only a few are left white. During the late 1920s and 1921s, the paintings already have thick black lines separating the shapes. Over the years and the evolution of Piet Mondrian's work, he began to extend all the lines to the edges of the canvas and to use less and less colored forms, preferring white.
From Paris to New York
In September 1938, Piet Mondrian left Paris due to fascism, having moved to London. After Holland and Paris were invaded, Paris moved to Manhattan, New York, where he remained until his death. There, he became part of the city's art scene and continued to develop his abstract and geometric approach. His paintings had a major impact on American art and influenced artists such as Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt. Piet Mondrian died in New York in 1944, but his work remains influential and inspiring. His abstract and geometric paintings are considered some of the most important in modern art, and his approach to simplification and abstraction has had a significant impact on art history.
What are the characteristics of Piet Mondrian's works?
Piet Mondrian's works are known for their abstract and geometric characteristics, which reflect his interest in harmony and universal balance. Some of the main features of his work include:
Piet Mondrian's Influence
Piet Mondrian was one of the most important and influential artists of the 20th century, and his work has had a significant impact on modern and contemporary art. He was also one of the founders of the artistic movement known as De Stijl, which sought the simplification and abstraction of form, color and line. Piet Mondrian's work is characterized by a geometric and abstract approach, with the use of straight lines and primary colors, in addition to the use of blanks and negatives. His work was influenced by abstract art and Cubism, and he is considered one of the pioneers of abstract geometric art.
Mondrian's influence on art can be seen in many art movements such as minimalism, op art and constructivism. Its geometric and abstract approach has inspired many artists to explore new forms of visual expression and to experiment with the relationship between form and color. Furthermore, Mondrian's influence was not limited to visual art. His simplification and abstraction approach had a significant impact in other areas such as architecture, graphic design and fashion. His work helped to establish a modern aesthetic that emphasized functionality, simplicity and elegance.
