Fabio Crimaldi s4733266

IET
P
MONDRIAN

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction (page 3)
The life (page 3)
Mondrians De Stijl (page 5)
Impact of De Stijl on further art (page 6)
Conclusion (page 7)
Bibliography (page 8)

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INTRODUCTION
Piet Mondrian is one of the major names in the panorama of the dutch avant-garde. His
unique style of painting blended with the constant will of renewal brought him to represent
effectively the ideal of perfection.
Mondrian started out as a landscapist but slowly and gradually, after various experiences
throughout the Europe (Paris and his cubist period the most important one), became the
spiritual and ideal father of what we now know as Abstractionism. The precepts of the first
parenthesis of De stijl , avant-garde movement that he founded with van Doesburg and van
der Leck, are the exact reproduction of what he reckoned art was.
Anyhow even after his death in 1944 his artistic composition continues to fascinate and to
attract retinue. Essentially, as we will see after, we cannot really say that he has a well
defined stylistic line, since his real revolution is this: the ubiquitous change and the
impressive variety of way in which the same goal, id est the one of perfection and soul-
heightening experience that the art should impress in the observer, is achieved in completely
different ways.
The avant-garde is Mondrian and Mondrian is the avant-garde, in a complex of fluid change
never to be stopped, always inspired by the same values and aims.

THE LIFE (1872-1944)1

Piet Mondrian was born in 1844 in Amersfoort, in the Netherlands. His family was heavily
calvinist and he basically grew up in an environment that, despite very religious, was still
very creative, since his own father was delighting himself as a draftsman. The family forced
him to get and education and basically planned for him a more serious career than the one of
artist, that he was so insistently craving. So after passing his exam that was inhabilitating him
to teach painting in schools, in 1892, he started taking painting lessons in a studio of a local
painter close by Winterswijk and successively he subscribed to the Rijksacademie in
Amsterdam.
In 1893 he exhibited in Utrecht, for the first time ever, his paintings, most of which were
landscapes representations, together with some still lifes and portraits.
In his retrospective Towards the True Vision of Reality, written from the 1941, he speaks
about this period: I preferred to paint landscape and houses seen in grey, dark weather or
in
very strong sunlight, when the density of atmosphere obscures the details and
accentuates the large outlines of objects. I never painted these things romantically but from
the very beginning, I was always a realist .2
In 1903 he went visiting a friend of his in Brabant, Belgium, and moved there in 1904. There
Mondrian was utterly amazed by the calmness and tranquillity that was stirring and in that
place he experienced a period of artistic discovery.

1
everything but the quotations from the retrospective book of Mondrian was taken by
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Piet-Mondrian (under the five sections from early life to later years)
2
Mondrian, towards the true vision of reality, p. 338

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When he moved back to Amsterdam in 1905, his style was noticeably changed (as it could be
seen in the painting Farm Along the River Gein). De facto he was putting more care on the
chromatic part of the painting and he was openly emphasizing rhythm and harmony on the
canvas, setting aside just temporarily the classic approach to the genre, basically consisting
of the accentuated dichotomy amongst light and shadow. Despite that, his works of this
period can still be categorizable within the boundaries of the landscapism.
In 1907 the bold and utterly new use of the color from the post-impressionists really got his
attention (as we can notice in the sketch red cloud). In the same period he was heavily
intrigued by the style of the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, and especially from his use of
the scale of yellows and the somber atmosphere he was issuing throughout his whole oeuvre
(as it is evident in the painting Woods near Oele).
In 1908 he entered in the dutch luminists movement who had his landmark in the set of
works by Toorop; here he was heavily influenced in his use of dots and lines in order to
confer light to the painting, even with the astonishingly revolutionary usage of primary colors
(as it can be noticed in the painting Windmill in the sunlight). He will write in the
retrospective about his life The first thing to change in my painting was the color. I forsook
natural color for pure color3. Anyhow even in this period his adherence to the precepts of
the movement was not full, we can indeed see how the evident dichotomy of red and blue is
present and constitutes a real twist ( as we can see in Red Tree).
In the 1909 he exposed his works in the Stendelijk museum of Amsterdam, after that he
became one of the biggest names in the dutch avan-gardist environment.
Furthermore the ideas of complete equilibrium and unity among the soul and the matter in the
cosmos by the theosophical society influenced him a lot ( as it can be seen it the tryptic
Evolution , 1910).
During 1910 he exposed at the St. Lucas exhibition in Amsterdam that brought him lots of
attention and basically started to making him known amongst the european environment of
avan-garde. In 1912, after his exposition in Paris in 1911, decided to move in the French
capital. In this time Mondrian was really influenced by the early works of Pablo Picasso and
Braque; despite this his affiliation to the movement was not complete. As we can indeed
notice, his paintings of thecubist period (1912-1917) are not classically cubist since
Mondrian was avoiding curved lines and diagonal accents, furthermore he was really
accentuating the usage of straight vertical and horizontal lines.
In 1914 he is forced to come back to the Netherlands due to the illness of his father and due
to the incoming war. In coming back to his land, he meets Schoenmaker a philosopher that
really influenced him and due to which Mondrian set the ultimate goal of his art make the
viewer experience a heightened consciousness experience in everyday life.
The artistic apotheosis of this position can be found in the avan-garde movement created by
Mondrian together with van Doesburg and van der Leck: De Stijl. Mondrian will leave the
movement in 1922 due to misunderstandings and incomprehensions with van Doesburg.

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ondrian, towards the true vision of reality ,p. 338
M
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After having moved again to Paris and to London he fled the WWII Europe and went to New
York in 1940. During his last phase of artistic creation Mondrian abandoned completely the
austerity of the simple black lines and the white, blank spaces. His american period was one
of his most inspired, especially because at that time america was living a serious art
flourishing period. Jazz and Swing had a decisive influence on him.
He died of pneumonia in 1944.

MONDRIANS DE STIJL
De Stijl had a huge impact not only in the dutch avan-garde environment but also in the
european and even more generally in the global one. In 1917 the first number of the magazine
de Stijl was published, 12 would have been the total number of magazines distributed,
Mondrian was the author. This constitutes essentially the manifesto of the movement that was
defined as essential, geometrical and abstract4, referred to as Neoplasticism. Mondrian so
summarizes his approach: Artalthough an end in itself, like a religionis the means
through which we can know the universal and contemplate it in plastic form.5 Basically for
Mondrian what he started was not a visual art movement and not even an artistic movement
in general: it was simply an artistic philosophy, almost a religion to follow in order to achieve
through art the goals of equilibrium and grace.
The movement was not just sticking to the visual art field, philosophy, fine arts and
architecture were also an important part of the project of utter artistic revolution that the
movement wanted to bring on.
The most important part of this artistic speculation school was the usage of primary colors,
that had to be the real main elements, and the usage of straight lines. The cleanness of the
style was aimed to heighten the daily life experience through the art. This precepts were all
introduced mainly by Mondrian.
Even though Netherlands were neutral at the time, the shock of the incoming first world war
was upsetting the whole population. We can notice how de Stijl and Mondrian are the
loudest representants of the common sense about that period and its numerous implications.
The sense of unstableness was ruling and this movement simply represented a proposal to
change the things, a promise of harmony and stability, an utopistic ideal of calmness and
tranquillity.
The peculiarity of the movement was the utter uniformity of the style of his followers. At
least for what concerns the first part of the movement, indeed, we can notice how there is no
way in which we can possibly distinguish the works of the different exponents[1]: de Stijl
was based on Mondrian view of color, the distribution of it and the lines and that had to be
how the message of peacefulness and harmony would have been passed. One of the most
relevant artworks in this sense is surely Composition with black, blue and yellow, painted
in 1925; here we can notice very evidently the pristine will of Mondrian to simply stick to
primary colors with the only addition of the black. The most important thing to notice is the

4
Sergio Polano in Scritti di arte e di architettura (page 18)
5
Fer B: On Abstract Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; 1997:32-54.

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chromatic harmonic hierarchy that here is prevailing amongst the features. Mondrian here,
with his meticulous study of this chromatic order wants to essentially draw a line in which
the painting has to be observed: firstly look at the red square, then at the black, blue and
yellow; the whole composition is rife with harmony and equilibrium, from both a theoretical
color point of view and from a conceptual point of view: Mondrian wants to pass on the
feel of calmness and harmony.
After his departure from the group in 1922, the manner and the style of the movement
radically changes. Van Doesburg, applying some Dada ideas to the philosophy of the group
in the attempt to moderate the rigid strictness towards the sticking to the art basis elements6,
changed the original Mondrians Neoplasticism to Elementarism, id est the introduction of
some features utterly out of Mondrians view such as the diagonal line and the more dynamic
vibe it wanted to instil in the artwork7.
Anyhow he still remains loyal to his original ideas and keeps on painting using just straight
horizontal and vertical lines. As we can indeed notice in his painting, largely acknowledged
as his masterpiece, Broadway Boogie Woogie, crafted in 1942-43 whilst he was living in
the USA, Mondrian here makes usage of the usual straight lines but lacks the usage of black
and gives a more dynamic sense to the whole interrupting all of a sudden. Furthermore in this
artwork large rectangles are missing and the forms on which he is focusing are way smaller.8

IMPACT OF DE STIJL ON THE FURTHER ART

The dutch avan-garde movement had a huge cultural impact at the time and influenced lots of
artists that were intrigued by its ideals of cleanness and massive usage of elementary
geometrical forms and colors in order to state something so deep and yet so readily and
simply passed. The original ideas of Mondrian were the most widespread and so we can
actually say that the first, pure, kind of De Stijl sans contaminations of Dada is the one that
had the hugest impact.
In the architectural field Le Corbusier was one of the most heavily influenced artists. We can
indeed observe how the strict geometrism of De Stijl has largely influenced his way of
planning buildings9.
The german-american architect Mies van der Rohe was captivated by the dutch avan-garde
and its pristine form of geometrism. As we can de facto observe in the IBM Building (1971),
where the very straight lines remind us of De Stijl.10
Other than that the dutch avan-garde had a huge impact on furniture design and typography,
since the manner in which they configured their magazine was completely new. A major
influence in the design of furniture can be observed in the conceptual similarity that brings
together De Stijl and the Bauhaus school in Germany. The real difference amongst the two
movements was that Bauhaus was not using color as much as De Stijl was doing and also the

6
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/de-stijl.htm
7
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/elementarism.htm#characteristics
8
https://www.scribd.com/document/250466142/DeStijl
9
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/architecture/le-corbusier.htm (under biography)
10
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/architecture/mies-van-der-rohe.htm (under influences on Miess style of
architecture)
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space organization was less strict in De Stijl than in the german avan-garde school. The
similarities were huge but the most noticeable one is surely the mere geometrism that is
encountered in almost every Bauhaus work.11
Influences of the Mondrians De Stijl can be actually found also in the field of fashion ( the
multinational company Nike released Mondrians trousers, using the most basic elements of
his work; furthermore also the De Stijl swimsuit by Sarah Schofield is a clear example) and
of music ( the rock band White Stripes released his second album completely dedicated to the
movement, also calling it De Stijl, including in the sleeve notes some pictures of De Stijl
furniture)[11].
De Stijl has also inspired the graphic designer Jessica Helfand in his article Geometry is
never wrong in 1997, uttering that De Stijl offers a solution in order to clean up our
environment from all the clutter that surrounds us.12

CONCLUSION
Piet Mondrian is evidently one of the most vivid representers of the avan-garde and deserves
to be remembered for the deep conceptual framework that he gave to his oeuvre. He did not
want to make people admire his artwork, applauding his technique and his skills, he simply
wanted to pass a message to his audience and to heighten their daily life experience with the
cleanness of the paintings.
The period he lived in, the one that saw two terrible wars occur in less than half a century,
was full of uncertainness. He represented the utopia, the impossible world made out of basic
elements, the simple and elegant prototype of reality we would like to live in, in which
everything is plain, unambiguous, completely clear.
His art could be summed up in the dutch word schoon whose both meanings mirror
perfectly his view of the art. On one hand the dutch word could signify the cleanness of its
work, as we said before, so keen to the mere usage of the art basic components. On the other
hand it could signify the handsomeness of its work and so its really esthetic call and study
of color and its best combinations in order to direct the gaze of the viewer, making him
understand such a complex message conveying it sans any word, instead through the mere
image.
According to the art historian Jaff Mondrian is just the pursuer of a trend that has been on
for centuries in the Netherlands, id est representing nature through iconoclasm and the
restrained, characteristic of seventeenth century dutch painters such as Vermeer and De
Hooch.13
Finally Piet Mondrian was a forerunner of the Modernism, since he introduced it in the
Netherlands and even anticipated and influenced largely movements like Bauhaus.
Piet Mondrian deed and goal in art is simply to represent the unrepresentable, the calmness in
a always faster and frenetic world, the equilibrium during the war storm. Openly utopian and
yet fascinating.

11
https://arthistory.knoji.com/de-stijl-mondrian-and-his-influence/
12
https://www.typotheque.com/articles/de_stijl_new_media_and_the_lessons_of_geometry
13
Netherlands in a nuthsell, page 83.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online ( https://www.britannica.com/biography/Piet-Mondrian )
Mondrian, towards the true vision of reality, Valentine Gallery, 1941
heo van Doesburg: Scritti di arte e di architettura , Officina Edizioni,
Sergio Polano, T
1979
Fer B: On Abstract Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; 1997
the site http://www.visual-arts-cork.com
Jibran Saeed, Theo Van Doesburg and Piet mondrian, Jibran Saeed Publishing
the site http://www.arthistory.knoji.com
Eye magazine, No. 24, Spring 1997 as Geometry is never wrong
Netherlands in a nutshell, Frits van Oostrom, Hubert Slings , published in 2011