Evening; Red Tree (1908–1910)
Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague
Twisting red tree against blue, painted at Domburg: an early move towards primary colours
Image: Piet Mondrian · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Art
Piet Mondrian
1872–1944 · Dutch
De Stijl (Neoplasticism)
Piet Mondrian was a Dutch painter who evolved from landscapes and Cubist trees to pure geometric abstraction. A leading figure of De Stijl, he developed Neoplasticism, reducing painting to black horizontal and vertical lines, white and the three primary colours, and his grids became one of the most recognisable images in modern design.
How to spot them
- ▸Grid of thick black horizontal and vertical lines enclosing rectangles of red, yellow, blue and white
- ▸Only right angles and primary colours plus black, white and grey; no curves
- ▸Late New York works replace black lines with jazzy strips of small coloured squares (Boogie Woogie)
- ▸Early work: trees gradually abstracted into a web of lines (Red Tree, Gray Tree)
Key works
Gray Tree (1911)
Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague
Tree dissolved into Cubist-influenced grey lines, a step towards abstraction
Image: Piet Mondrian · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow (1930)
Kunsthaus Zürich
Small square canvas dominated by a large red rectangle: his classic Neoplastic grid
Image: Piet Mondrian · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942–1943)
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Yellow lines of tiny coloured blocks evoking Manhattan's street grid and jazz
Image: Piet Mondrian · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Victory Boogie Woogie (1942–1944)
Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague
Unfinished diamond-shaped canvas left at his death, with tape still attached
Image: Piet Mondrian · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Quick-fire facts
- •Mondrian was born in Amersfoort, Netherlands, and died in New York in 1944
- •He co-founded the De Stijl movement and magazine with Theo van Doesburg in 1917
- •He called his theory Neoplasticism (De Nieuwe Beelding)
- •He reportedly broke with van Doesburg in the 1920s over van Doesburg's introduction of diagonal lines
- •He dropped an 'a' from his original surname, Mondriaan, after moving to Paris
- •He lived in London (Hampstead) from 1938 to 1940 before moving to New York
- •Yves Saint Laurent's 1965 Mondrian dress made his grid a fashion icon
- •Kunstmuseum Den Haag (formerly the Gemeentemuseum) holds the world's largest Mondrian collection
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Piet Mondrian
- Smarthistory — Smarthistory: Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow