Piet Mondrian

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION
UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Self Portrait

Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondrian (March 7, 1872 – February 1, 1944), was an influential Dutch painter, and one of the founders of the Dutch modern movement De Stijl. He also evolved a non-representational form that he termed neoplasticism, which consisted of white ground, upon which he painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors.

Piet Mondrian

Early life and education

Piet Mondrian was born on March 7, 1872 in the Dutch town of Amersfoort. His father and uncle taught him to draw and paint.

His artistic talent was fostered by his father, a confirmed Calvinist and a schoolmaster, with whom the young Mondrian collaborated in a series of historical paintings with a moralizing aim. In spite of this initial support, Mondrian was confronted with harsh opposition form his family when he decided to give up his career as an art professor and devote himself entirely to painting. In 1892, Mondrian enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam and entered that city's artistic circles. During the same period, he came into contact for the first time with esotericism, most notably with Theosophy, which would lead to his gradual estrangement from the Calvinist faith.[1]

Artistic career

Mondrian was first employed as a primary school teacher, and also painted naturalistic landscapes. His early works employed soft, misty colors of the Dutch countryside, but around 1907 his palette expanded into stronger color schemes.

Woods Near Oele

Woods Near Oele:

This large canvas, whose subject has been identified... as the woods near the village of Oele... marks a milestone in the painter's work. It shows the phase of his art in which his horizon opened up and he began to look beyond the somewhat narrow boundaries of the Dutch school...

The painting itself is clearly a transitional work. On the one hand it belongs... to a period in which a scene of nature is brought to sober, almost solemn simplicity by means of rigorous stylization and stringent two-dimensional treatment. On the other hand, the color, the brushwork, and the rhythm of the painting betray a dynamism that indicates foreign influences...

The new view of reality, the realization that there are forces existing in nature related to those of human feeling and thought, stimulated Mondrian to attempt a fresh approach.[2]

The artist explored artistic styles like Luminism (also called Divisionism) and Symbolism, but in 1911 was drawn to the Cubism of Picasso and Braque. "Mondrian developed his own individual notion of Synthetic Cubism, exhibiting a definite tendency toward full abstraction."[3] He radically simplified the elements of his paintings to reflect what he saw as the spiritual order underlying the visible world, creating a clear, universal aesthetic language within his canvases.









Theosophical Society involvement

In 1908 Piet Mondrian became interested in the Theosophical Society. Its founder, Blavatsky believed that it was possible to attain a knowledge of nature more profound than that provided by empirical means, and much of Mondrian's work for the rest of his life was inspired by his search for that spiritual knowledge.

Later years

Published collections and exhibit catalogs

  • Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art, 1937, and Other Essays, 1941-1943. New York: Wittenborn and Co., 1945.

Other Resources

Notes

  1. ↑ José Marίa Faerna, General Editor. Great Modern Masters: Mondrian (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997), 7.
  2. ↑ Piet-Mondrian.org.
  3. ↑ José Marίa Faerna, General Editor. Great Modern Masters: Mondrian (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997), 7.
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