Piet Mondrian — Farm near Duivendrecht Print

About Piet Mondrian

Dutch · 1872–1944

Piet Mondrian began by painting landscapes in the Netherlands. His route to abstraction was gradual, passing through increasingly distilled forms rather than arriving at a ready-made formula. Influences from Symbolism and Post-Impressionism encouraged him to seek a deeper structure within what he saw. Trees, buildings and landscape became starting points for an investigation of rhythm and balance.

A move to Paris in 1911 brought Mondrian into close contact with Cubism. He pushed its experiments toward a painting no longer dependent on representing visible things. In his mature work, horizontal and vertical lines, primary colours and areas of white became a complete vocabulary. Their relationships mattered more than the identity of any subject outside the picture.