Mondrian, Piet (Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan 1872-1944)

In the early 1900s many artists tried various abstract ways of representing reality. Mondrian went beyond them. In his final compositions he avoided any suggestion of reproducing the material world. Instead using horizontal and vertical black lines that outline blocks of pure white, red, blue or yellow, he expressed his conception of ultimate harmony and equilibrium. Mondrian was born on March 7, 1872 in Amersfoort, The Netherlands. He studied at the Amsterdam Academy from 1892 to 1895 then began painting on his own. Most of his early works were landscapes. In 1909 he began a series of paintings of trees in which he developed an increasingly abstract style. He moved to Paris, about 1912, where he was influenced by the cubist painters. During World War I, Mondrian painted in The Netherlands. There he helped found De Stijl a magazine of the arts that influenced European painting, architecture, and design. He also began to formulate his own aesthetic theories. His style, and its underlying artistic principles, he called neoplasticism. The later paintings, which date from 1920 until his death, have simple titles, such as ‘Composition in Red, Yellow and Blue’ painted in 1926, and ‘Composition in White, Black and Red’ (1936).
Mondrian lived in Paris from 1919 to 1938. He moved to London in 1938 and left there for New York in 1940. His works were admired by other artists, but did not sell. His final painting, called ‘Victory Boogie Woogie’, was still unfinished when he died in New York City on February 1, 1944.