Module 1 Chapter 12

Study three artists.

Part 2 : Piet Mondrian

I have chosen Mondrian to study as I discovered his “black and white” paintings when I first went to art school in the 1960s, and that led me to discover the tree paintings which he made earlier in his career. Apart from being very beautiful, they and his later style are filled with intersecting lines, so it seemed like a good opportunity to get reacquainted with his work.

Piet Mondrian (1872 – 1944)

Mondrian was almost an exact contemporary of Kandinsky, having been born into a strict Calvinist family in 1872 in Amersfoort in Holland, the second of 5 children. His father and his uncle were both gifted amateur artists, and they taught him to draw and paint. It was his father’s intention that he should become an art teacher, and despite receiving the necessary diplomas, he decided to become an artist, and enrolled at the Royal Academy in Amsterdam in 1892, where the courses were classical.

His early work is primarily naturalistic or impressionistic landscapes, using a dark, muted colour palate. Typical of this period is Farm with line of washing c 1900 It appears to be accepted that much of his work from this period was aimed at the art market in Holland to enable him to earn a living, rather than as a search for a personal style, but throughout the first decade of the twentieth century a personal style does begin to develop as his colour palate lightens and contrasts within his work heightens, and then by the middle of the decade reflects the influence of Pointillism and Fauvism.

Farm at Duivendrecht c 1907 (not a very good image, but the best I could find) is a beautiful picture, with the winter trees against the sky reduced to an extraordinary pattern of crossing lines . Trees had featured in his work for some time, and he gradually reduced his landscapes to single trees to enable him to concentrate on the form. The Red Tree 1908-1910 is a dynamic and rhythmic work, using a simple contrast of blue and red.

Mondrian moved to Paris in 1912, and the influence of Cubism and Picasso and Braque showed very quickly in his work . He continued to work with the tree theme, and five paintings from 1912 – 1913, which demonstrate how quickly his style developed, can be seen here (images 23 – 28).

He returned to Holland in 1914 to visit his sick father, and was unable to return to Paris because of the outbreak of WW1. During this period, he was introduced to Kandinsky’s book On the Spiritual in Art, and this, with his already strong interest in Theosophy, led to him developing an entirely abstract style, which he called Neoplasticism.

By the time he returned to Paris after the end of the war, he was painting grid based pictures, the style for which he became best know. Composition with Red, Blue, Black, Yellow and Gray painted in 1921 is typical . It consists of a black grid with patches of the three primary colour, plus gray.

The outbreak of WW2 forced him to move to first London and then America, where he stayed until he died in 1944. His work had continued to develop between the wars in Paris, perhaps most significant being the introduction of coloured lines. This developed further in New York, culminating in a series of paintings, where the black lines have been entirely replaced by coloured lines, and there are far more rectangles, including on the lines themselves. Broadway Boogie-Woogie 1942 -3 , a riot of movement, pure colour and rythym, is his last completed picture. Victory Boogie-Woogie which remained unfinished at his death is particularly interesting to the artist as it shows his working methods of sticking rectangles of coloured paper to the canvas which he was able to move about until he was satisfied.

Mondrian’s work has had a huge influence on many aspects of art and design – fashion, graphic design, advertising. Although attempts have been made to belittle his work by saying it could have been done by a child, it is quite clear that his work is conceptual, and comes from a life long search for harmony, based on his spirituality.

All of what I said about what the artist can learn from Kandinsky applies equally to Mondrian. Having looked closely at their lives and their work, given that they are almost exact contemporaries, I find it fascinating that they both set out to free their work from representation and make it abstract, and that having both started working primarily from nature, albeit with a entirely different set of influences and experiences, they both reached their goals in such different ways.

Bibliography

Mondrian John Milner ISBN 0 7143 3167 0

Mondrian The Art of Destruction Carel Blotkamp ISBN 0-948462-61-2

Mondrian: Flowers David Shapiro ISBN 0-8109-3615-1

Webliography

www.pietmondrian.org

http://paintings.name/piet-mondrian-biography.php