Piet Mondrian: Art for "The Man of the Future"

In the early twentieth century, many artistic movements began to thrive in European intellectual circles. Although these societies were varied in many philosophical ways, all of them were based on the belief of the life-altering influence of art and a general disgust for conventional artistic forms. One of the main champions of this creative outlet was a Dutch artist by the name of Piet Mondrian (Curotto 5). By the time of his death in 1944, Piet Mondrian would leave a lasting and radical impression on contemporary art in the form of the creation of a new style of art known as neoplasticism ("Piet" Encyclopedia 101).

Pieter Cornelius Mondrian was born in the Netherlands town of Amersfoort on March 7, 1872, into a straitlaced Calvinist family ("Piet" Encyclopedia 101). His father, Pieter Cornelius Mondriaan Sr., was an elementary schoolteacher and an amateur artist. Frits Mondriaan, Piet's uncle, was active in the esteemed Hague School of Art ("Piet" Grove). With this artistic background, Mondrian declared his hope for becoming a painter himself shortly after completing his schooling. The Mondriaan family opposed this career choice with the opinion that it was too chancy. So, following his father's wishes of pursuing teaching, Piet decided to work for his license, finally obtaining it in 1889 (Jaffe 10). With the plan of falling back on his diploma in case of failure, Piet enrolled into the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam in 1892 to continue his higher level learning. While studying, he became involved in the artistic communities around the city (Curotto 7). The most notable of these circles was Utrecht's Kunstliefde (Love of Art) Society. Within this program, Mondrian was able to publicly display his work for the first time in 1893 (Jaffe 10).

Piet left the Academy of Fine Arts in 1895 ("Piet" Book 95). Over the next few years, he earned money doing various jobs such as book illustrating, painting a ceiling in an Amsterdam canal house, and creating panels for a pulpit ("Piet" Grove). During the rest of the 1890s and early into the 1900s, Piet, influenced by his uncle Frits, dealt almost solely with landscapes (Curotto 7). His interest in landscaping also governed his location; Piet traveled to North Brabant, Oele, and the Amstel and Gein rivers, and started to focus on a theme of windmills. The year 1903 marked a crowning moment in the artist's career when he won his first award, the Willink van Collen Prize of the Arti et Amicitiae Society, with a still life (Jaffe 11).

The first retrospective art showing of Mondrian's work took place in 1909 at the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam along with pieces done by two of his close friends, Cornelius Spoor and Jan Sluijters ("Piet" Grove). This successful exhibition cemented Piet in the community's eyes as one of the exemplary painters of the new art of the Netherlands (Jaffe 11). A chief proponent of Dutch art by 1911, Mondrian was selected to be a founding member of the Moderne Kunstkring, established by Conrad Kickert ("Piet" Grove). Their international exhibit of art in October or November of 1911 opened Piet's eyes to the work of Paris artists such as Braque and Picasso (Curotto 7). With the support of Kickert, Mondrian moved to Paris in the early months of 1912 ("Piet" Book 95).

In France, Mondrian was involved with both the Moderne Kunstkring and the Indépendants in Paris. During this time, he also dropped the second "a" from his last name "Mondriaan" (Jaffe 13). He reached new levels of fame in Paris before having to return to the Netherlands in 1914 to visit with his father, now on his deathbed. In what could be considered bad timing, World War I started in August of that year and Mondrian was trapped in the neutral Netherlands for the next four years ("Piet" Book 95). It was in the town of Laren that he became familiar with philosopher and theosophist Dr. M. H. J. Schoenmaekers, whose works sat proudly on Piet's bookcase. Theosophy was not a new subject to Mondrian. In fact, he had first encountered the form of esotericism as early as his schooling in Amsterdam and joined the Netherlands Theosophical Society in 1909, which officially broke his ties with his Calvinist upbringing (Read 197).

Piet met Theo van Doesburg and Bart van der Leck in 1915 and developed friendships with both (The Book 95). His relationship with Theo matured to a point that, in 1917, Mondrian was asked to help van Doesburg found the periodical entitled De Stijl ("Piet" Encyclopedia 101), a magazine that reviewed the arts but became synonymous with the group of artists that contributed to it and believed in the ideas expressed in the publication (Curotto 8). Their manifesto, published in one of the earlier issues, clarified De Stijl's "neoplastic" principle ("Piet" Book 95). Piet wrote essays dealing with art in general for the first few editions of De Stijl and continued to be involved with the journal when he left once again for Paris. In 1920, a Paris art dealer named Léonce Rosenburg published a book entitled Le Néo-Plasticisme detailing Mondrian's essays; the book helped spread his work to a wider audience (Jaffe 14).

Upset with van Doesburg's change of views on artistic principles, 1925 marked the year that Piet Mondrian and De Stijl went their separate ways ("Piet" Book 96). Mondrian's success reached new heights as his paintings began to amass a following in the United States and in Germany. Mondrian exhibited with the Cercle et Carré group in 1930. In 1938, frightened by the Munich crisis, the early forebodings of World War II, Mondrian moved to London, England. There he became a member of the Circle group and continued painting (Jaffe 11-12).

After coming to a conclusion that London was not safe either, Piet relocated to New York City in 1940 where he set up a studio on Fifth Avenue (Curotto 8). In 1942, just before his seventieth birthday, his work was displayed by itself at the Valentine Dudensing Gallery. This was one of his last retrospectives (Jaffe 15). Completing his last works in 1943, Mondrian was found sick with pneumonia in late 1944. Piet Mondrian died shortly afterwards at the age of the seventy-two in New York City on February 1, 1944 ("Piet" Encyclopedia 102).

Piet Mondrian first began painting at the end of the nineteenth century when the realist Hague school towered over all other art in the Netherlands; thus, the influence for Mondrian's early works can be attributed to the Hague (Encyclopedia 101). Dusk is an example of his early craftsmanship. In this oil painting, completed when he was only eighteen, Piet concentrated on the treatment of light, space, and mood, three important elements of the creations of the Hague school (Jaffe 50). Mondrian seemed to reject popular, attractive effects early in his career. While most of his Dutch contemporaries experimented with details, Piet concentrated on uniting his paintings structurally (Jaffe 16). House on the Gein, painted in 1900, was put together during Piet's landscaping years around Amsterdam. The typical brushwork of his entire career (loose, flexible, and airy) is represented in this oil. House on the Gein is once again evocative of the Hague school, but also has an independent nature about it. Piet's attention to structural support and innovativeness can be seen in the roof forming a diamond with its own reflection. No Dutch artist was using reflections in this way at this particular point in art (Jaffe 52). Soft watercolors, a hint of symbolism and a theme of windmills were also the focus of Mondrian in the early twentieth century ("Piet" Encyclopedia 101).

In 1907, a radical change in Piet's style can be identified. Around this time, Mondrian had discovered works by Vincent Van Gogh, Kees van Dongen and Edward Munch (Curotto 7). Mondrian began to use bright colors and to put an emphasis on lines. The painting Woods at Oele is a sign of his transformation from a narrow, national view of art to an international outlook ("Piet" Book 96). The Woods at Oele also shows a brush stroking trend at the time: Fauvism, or pointillism. A tendency for Piet, in this timeframe, was to generalize his work, as seen in the 1909 oil entitled Dunes ("Piet" Book 96). Details continued to be kept to a bare minimum, consequently accentuating the main contours of his works ("Piet" Grove). From 1908 to 1910, living in the Netherlands town of Domburg, Mondrian adopted luminist principles which stuck with him until the early 1910's (Curotto 7). While putting a stress on form in the works of his luminist period, Windmill in Sunlight (1908) and Red Tree (1908) show Mondrian's masterfulness at reducing his color palette to only a few shades and using their contrast to bring about a mood (Jaffe 17-19).

After contact with the work of Cézanne, Pablo Picasso and George Braque, Mondrian interested himself in abstraction, and, more specifically, cubism (The Book 96). With cubism, Mondrian found a way of caging nature in very strict and formulated boundaries while still showing its magnificence. The structure of the paintings took center-stage in these works, and Piet sacrificed anything, even colors, to maintain it (Jaffe 21). Piet used grays and ochers, an oval composition and the themes of trees and buildings during this period ("Piet" Encyclopedia 101). Arguably the greatest example of Piet's shift towards cubism is his duo of 1912 still lifes, both entitled Still Life with Gingerpot. In the first, the objects are painted as they would be seen in reality. The second, though, diminishes the objects to nothing more than illustrative shapes. An example of his ability of confining the unpredictability of nature can be seen in The Gray Tree (1912) and Flowering Apple Tree (1912), where Mondrian uses almost the exact same tree skeleton to do two entirely different works (Jaffe 22). When Picasso and Braque began to turn away from cubism, Mondrian continued on. Piet decided to take the art form one step farther to total abstraction, calling it "synthetic cubism" (Curotto 7). His "synthetic cubism" reached its farthest limit in a series of sketches and paintings, created from 1914 to 1917, inspired by a pier overlooking an ocean. At first the pier is visible, but through various stages the entire piece becomes a rhythm of vertical and horizontal lines (Jaffe 31).

In 1917, after meeting Theo van Doesburg and Bart van der Leck, and establishing De Stijl, Piet Mondrian started to experiment with different artistic theories ("Piet" Grove). At first, Mondrian painted overlapping rectangles of different colors and sizes but soon did away with the overlapping altogether. Mondrian, next, began to bring the rectangles into the same plane in a shallower area. Finally, a grid of lines was placed into the style, a trait that would become much more important than originally thought ("Piet" Encyclopedia 101). A theory was developed by Mondrian and rest of De Stijl that speculated that the art of the future would be "the expression of universal cosmic order" and that you would achieve the state through horizontal and vertical lines, and the colors red, blue, yellow, white and black ("Piet" Grove). The art form's purpose was to expose the principles of balance and harmony that could not be expressed by nature. Once this was done, Mondrian felt that there would be no use for any other fine art. This idea became known as "neoplasticism" ("Piet" Book 97).

Piet's style of painting did not appear all at once; it evolved, starting in 1917 to its final conclusion in 1920. Composition of 1916 used the primary colors. Composition with Lines (1917) was made entirely up of vertical and horizontal lines. Composition III with Color Planes (1917) introduced block areas of color (Jaffe 27-29). By 1922, however, Piet Mondrian was working completely in the scope of neoplasticism ("Piet" Encyclopedia 101).

The 1920s and 1930s saw Piet Mondrian create such paintings as Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue (1921), Composition (1922), Composition in a Lozenge (1925), Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow (1930), and Composition with Red and Black (1936). Although all the works had limitations, Piet varied the proportions of lines and the division of colors to alter the impression ("Piet" Encyclopedia 101). With each completion of a painting, the start of the next creation began. Mondrian's goal was to take a step further each time by making the painting more simplistic and yet more powerful (Jaffe 30). The 30's also saw Piet abandon using all of the primary colors, instead opting to use just black and yellow. Composition with Two Lines, painted in 1931, shows the simplistic aura that Piet developed; it is structured with two mere intersecting lines ("Piet" Book 97).

Arguably two of Mondrian's best pieces were created after moving to America (Jaffe 31). The black lines that were a staple of neoplasticism were replaced with colored lines and small blocks of color ("Piet" Book 97). The vigor and liveliness of New York City had inspired Piet to become a bit more creative with the works in terms of color (Curotto 8). Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942/1943) was the last painting that Piet Mondrian completed ("Piet" Grove). It is a disjointed painting with a faster, more exciting tempo than that of his prior paintings (Jaffe 124). Victory Boogie Woogie (1943/1944) was unfortunately unfinished at the time of Mondrian's death (Curotto 8). But the oil shows an incredible energy for a man that was close to death, and a thirst for change even so late in his career (Jaffe 126).

Not only did Piet Mondrian play a factor in the development of the physical aspects of modern art in painting, architecture and design, but he contributed to the theoretical side of art, as well ("Piet" Encyclopedia 101). Piet Mondrian dedicated his career to finding the common ground between art and life ("Piet" Grove). It's no wonder that Piet, in his autobiography, coined his philosophy on life and art in two words: "Always further" (Jaffe 9). Feeling that art needed to open up "doors of perception" to the viewer, Mondrian often devoted his work to the "man of the future". In his mind, art contributed to the overall happiness of mankind. Piet summed up his thoughts: "Being nothing but an artifice, inasmuch as life is devoid of beauty, art is destined to disappear as life gains increasingly more beauty...Nowadays art is of extreme importance since it is necessary to prove in a physical manner, that is to say directly and independently of our individual conceptions, the laws that can determine the development of a truly human life." (Curotto 6)

Piet Mondrian remained humble, though, in regards to his contributions to the goal. In a letter to journalist and artist Charmion von Wiegand, he expressed his offerings to the search: "Shopping, I passed yesterday Second Avenue and saw the moon so nice in the still blue sky. All was in that. But all was also mixed up. So I felt again that men must come to be conscious of so much." ("Piet" Grove)

Works Cited

Curotto, Alberto. Mondrian. Trans. Ed. Jose Maria Faerna. New York City: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1997.

Jaffe, Hans L.C. Mondrian. New York City: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1985.

Mondrian, Piet. Broadway Boogie Woogie. The Museum of Modern Art, New York City.

---. Composition. Mr. and Mrs. Herbert M. Rothschild Collection, Ossining, New York.

---. Composition in a Lozenge. Private collection, the Netherlands.

---. Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue. Gemeentemuseum, the Netherlands.

---. Composition III with Color Planes. Gemeentemuseum, the Netherlands.

---. Flowering Apple Tree. Gemeentemuseum, the Netherlands.

---. Pier and Ocean. Kröller- Müller State Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands.

---. Red Tree. Gemeentemuseum, the Netherlands.

---. Still Life with Gingerpot II. Gemeentemuseum, the Netherlands.

---. Windmill in Sunlight. Gemeentemuseum, the Netherlands.

---. Victory Boogie Woogie. Mr. and Mrs. Burton Tremaine Collection, Meriden, Connecticut.

"Piet Mondrian." The Book of Art. Ed. David Sylvester. Vol. 8. New York City: Grolier Inc., 1965.

"Piet Mondrian." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Ed. Paula K. Byers. Vol. 11. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.

"Piet Mondrian." The Grove Dictionary of Art Online. Ed. Laura Macy. http://www.groveart.com> 03 October 2002.

Read, Herbert. A Concise History of Modern Painting. London: Thames Hudson Inc., 1968.