Piet Mondrian Encyclopædia Britannica |
b. March 7, 1872,
Feb. 1, 1944, New York City
original name PIETER
CORNELIS MONDRIAAN, painter, leading exponent
of the Dutch abstract-art movement known as de Stijl, whose
work exerted a profound influence on 20th-century
art, architecture, and graphic design. His early
works followed the prevailing trend of Dutch
landscape and still-life painting. After
experimentation with Cubism, his mature
"neoplastic" style emerged around 1920.
This style was intended as a purely objective
vision of reality based on the simplest harmonies
of straight line, right angle, and the primary
colours plus black and white.
WebMuseum: Mondrian, Piet
Biografie Piet Mondriaan
Eine tabellarische Übersicht über
das Leben von Piet Mondrian.
Celebrated Artists: Piet Mondrian
Perhaps one of this century's most
profound artists, one that has demonstrated a
great ability to create. He was an artist
austerely devoted to his beliefs and commitments.
He is known best for his days with the De Stijl
and Neo Plastic movement, but his influence has
grown to influence new styles of modernism to
MONDRIAN PIET (Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan
Yvan Verelst - firstname.lastname@example.org
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.
inwards is rejected by Mondrian when the object
is rejected. Focusing inwards is involvement.
Involvement with objects entails suffering. In
the paintings of chrysanthemums - that most
centripetal of flowers - there is a sense of
concentration that is agonising. It is as if the
artist were trying to hypnotise himself by gazing
into this flower and as if he were trying to
hypnotise the flower into suspending its process
of growth, the process that will make the petals
fall away, the flowers wilt and die (as it is
seen to do in two of the paintings in the
series). The rapt quality of the image seems to
embody a longing to deny time, the flower is held
together with a sort of desperation.
the series of images of trees that followed, the
forces of growth can no longer be held in. Growth
is seen as an irresistible force moving through
the tree - a river of life, spreading, demanding
space into which it can expand. Pictures such as The Red Tree reflect not
simply a tree seen now, but the way it has
evolved, has lived, has been formed, is still in
formation, will wither and die. In pictures such
as The Blue Tree the urgency of the need
to grow is such that it is as if the whole growth
were telescoped into one explosive moment like a
shellburst. Coursing with life, the trees are
twisted images of torment and despair.
Piran Montford -
is my collected list of internet based resources,
links, and other bits and bobs for the artist
Piet Mondrian: Works Viewable on the
"Everything in his
life was reasoned or calculated. He was a
compulsive neurotic and could never bear to see
anything disordered or untidy. He seemed to
suffer acutely, for instance, if a table had not
been laid with perfect symmetry."
- Hannah Höch on Piet Mondrian, quoted by
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