GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Born in Holland in 1872 and schooled in the study of classical art so that he could become a drawing teacher, Piet Mondrian eventually developed into the most abstract of all the abstractionists. In his earliest works, Mondrian described the flat Dutch countryside with a sensuous, painterly touch or a divided, pointillist technique. Around 1910, Mondrian’s paintings and drawings began to reveal his growing interest in the vocabulary of cubism, which he used to describe the underlying structures of nature. In 1912, Mondrian moved to Paris, where cubism was in full sway. There he toned down his colors and broke his composition into the abstract planes characteristic of that school. He used an assertive network of linear forms to break the natural motif into a loose, organic grid. Influenced by the work of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and cubism, Mondrian’s paintings progressively became more abstract.
Over the following decade, Mondrian abandoned the task of representing nature. By the start of the 1920s, his grid had become a precise yet infinitely flexible armature for each new composition. He eliminated all references to the natural world by 1921, creating an entirely non-representational style of art, which he called neo-plasticism. This is the style for which he became famous—images that only include proportion and balance with a combination of vertical and horizontal black bars, the three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), and three values (black, gray, and white).
Mondrian joined forces with other artists in Holland who hoped to renew Europe after the devastation of World War I through art and architecture. For Mondrian, his abstract paintings composed of simplified line and color, expressed a universal notion of beauty that could be understood by all. During the final “transatlantic” phase of Mondrian’s career, which saw him move from Paris to London and then New York as he fled the chaos of World War II, he gradually incorporated color directly into the lines of the grid, along with a new, syncopated rhythm inspired by boogie-woogie jazz and the urban fabric of the 20th-century city. He lived in New York and continued painting until his death in 1944.
Drawn from
- Abstract by Choice, DMCA, 1957
- DMA unpublished material, "Learn About Piet Mondrian," Smartphone Tour, 2012.
- DMA Label copy (Piet Mondrian), 2010.
NOTES
Dallas Museum of Art. Dallas Museum of Art Bulletin, 1987/88 Fall/Winter, Journal/Magazine/Newsletter, 1987; (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth224928/ : accessed January 21, 2015), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas , Texas.
See Mondrian- wall panel text from TAZ saved on my H drive
See Bolotowsky article on Neoplasticism, scanned from object file 2006.6, in Bolotowsky notebook.
Piet Mondrian’s first art teacher, J. B. Ueberfeldt, taught him using reproductions from 19th-century art journals. In 1892, Mondrian registered at the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunst in Amsterdam. During his early years in that city, the artist experimented with a variety of styles, including those of the Hague School, Amsterdam impressionism, and symbolism. His Country Road and Farm reflects the influence of impressionism in the Low Countries: he used a range of flowing brush strokes to create this picturesque landscape filled with trees and sheaves of wheat. The fluidity of Mondrian’s handling relates paintings such as this to those of Van Gogh. While in Amsterdam, Mondrian may well have visited the 1892 Van Gogh exhibition organized by Van Gogh’s sister-in-law, Joanna van Gogh. Like Mondrian, Van Gogh was dedicated to the material aspect of paint and to making his technique visible. Of course, Mondrian is best known for his geometric abstractions and collaboration with De Stijl in the 1920s. Much of this later mature work clearly relates to his earlier exploration of the elemental horizontals and verticals of this landscape.
See Hans Janssen and Joop M. Joosten, Mondrian 1892–1914: The Path to Abstraction, exh. cat. (Zwolle: Waanders Publishers; Fort Worth: Kimball Art Museum, 2002).
Excerpt from
Dorothy Kosinski, Van Gogh's Sheaves of Wheat (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2006), 110.
Born in Holland in 1872, schooled in the study of classical art so that he could become a drawing teacher, Piet Mondrian developed eventually into the most abstract of all the abstractionists. He was raised in an atmosphere of strict Calvinism and was deeply concerned throughout his life with the problem of expressing spiritual values through the medium of art.
His early paintings were softly realistic, then impressionistic. In 1912 Mondrian moved to Paris, where cubism was in full sway. There he toned down his colors and broke his composition into the abstract planes characteristic of that school. But Mondrian went further than the cubists. By 1921 he had achieved neo-plasticism, the style for which he became famous - the picture which is "nothing" but proportion and balance, where the use of vertical and horizontal black bars, of the three primary colors and of three values (black, gray and white) combine to please and to rest the eye.
Mondrian died in New York in 1944. Believing that art is a higher form than reality and that the pursuit of the spiritually absolute must void the world of appearances, he reduced his elements to the simplest and most pure available to the painter.
Excerpt from
Abstract by Choice, DMCA, 1957
"Learn About Piet Mondrian," DMA COLLECTION SMARTPHONE TOUR 2012
During his artistic studies, Piet Mondrian explored a variety of different styles in his paintings of the fields, rivers, and canals of his native Dutch landscape. Influenced by the work of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne (Say zan), and cubism, Mondrian’s paintings progressively became more abstract. Eventually, he eliminated all references to the natural world, creating an entirely non-representational art, which he called neo-plasticism. Mondrian joined forces with other artists in Holland who hoped to renew Europe after the devastation of World War I through art and architecture. For Mondrian, his abstract paintings composed of simplified line and color, expressed a universal notion of beauty that could be understood by all. Mondrian fled Europe for New York City in 1940, where he continued to paint until his death in 1944. He saw connections between his dynamically ordered abstract paintings and the pulsating rhythms of jazz and the bustling city.
DMA Label copy (Piet Mondrian), 2010.
The works by Piet Mondrian in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art constitute a true survey of the artist’s oeuvre, illustrating his transformation from a post-impressionist landscape painter to an austere abstract artist.
In his earliest works, Mondrian described the flat Dutch countryside with a sensuous, painterly touch or a divided, pointillist technique. Around 1910 Mondrian’s paintings and drawings began to reveal his growing interest in the vocabulary of cubism, which he used to describe the underlying structures of nature. He used an assertive network of linear forms to break the natural motif into a loose, organic grid.
Over the following decade, Mondrian gradually abandoned the task of representing nature. By the start of the 1920s, his grid had become a precise yet infinitely flexible armature for each new composition. He filled the grid with blocks of color in a limited range of hues: white, gray, and the primary colors of red, blue, and yellow.
During the final “transatlantic” phase of Mondrian’s career, which saw him move from Paris to London and then New York as he fled the chaos of World War II, he gradually incorporated color directly into the lines of the grid, along with a new, syncopated rhythm inspired by boogie-woogie jazz and the urban fabric of the 20th-century city.
ASSOCIATED CONTENT CHUNKS
AUDIO ASSETS
collections_2012_mondrian.mp3
Learn about Piet Mondrian (1872â0131944).
44997816: UMO
Collections smARTphone tour; Dr. Heather MacDonald discusses Windmill by Piet Mondrian (DMA collection 1989.142)
12936990: UMO
Collections smARTphone tour; Dr. Heather MacDonald discusses the painting techniques used in Mondrian's Place de la Concorde by Piet Mondrian (DMA collection 1982.22.FA)
12936982: UMO
Collections smARTphone tour; Dr. Heather MacDonald discusses Place de la Concorde by Piet Mondrian (DMA collection 1982.22.FA)
12936974: UMO
Gallery talk by Vivian Barclay, McDermott Graduate Curatorial Intern for Decorative Arts and Design, DMA; Discussing DMA collection paintings
13310000: UMO
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain, 1899 Piet Mondrian
WEB RESOURCES
- YouTube~Watch this video about Piet Mondrian from the Tate, London.
- Khan Academy~Watch this video about Mondrian's 1929 Composition No. II, with Red and Blue.
- Mondrianmat~Use this simple website to make your own digital image inspired by Mondrian.
- The Mondrian Guide to Life~Browse this list of ways to incorporate the artist's aesthetics and techniques into your daily life. (Tate, 2014)
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
FUN FACTS
TEACHING IDEAS
RULES
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General Description
Born in Holland in 1872 and schooled in the study of classical art so that he could become a drawing teacher, Piet Mondrian eventually developed into the most abstract of all the abstractionists. In his earliest works, Mondrian described the flat Dutch countryside with a sensuous, painterly touch or a divided, pointillist technique. Around 1910, Mondrian’s paintings and drawings began to reveal his growing interest in the vocabulary of cubism, which he used to describe the underlying structures of nature. In 1912, Mondrian moved to Paris, where cubism was in full sway. There he toned down his colors and broke his composition into the abstract planes characteristic of that school. He used an assertive network of linear forms to break the natural motif into a loose, organic grid. Influenced by the work of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and cubism, Mondrian’s paintings progressively became more abstract.
Over the following decade, Mondrian abandoned the task of representing nature. By the start of the 1920s, his grid had become a precise yet infinitely flexible armature for each new composition. He eliminated all references to the natural world by 1921, creating an entirely non-representational style of art, which he called neo-plasticism. This is the style for which he became famous—images that only include proportion and balance with a combination of vertical and horizontal black bars, the three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), and three values (black, gray, and white).
Mondrian joined forces with other artists in Holland who hoped to renew Europe after the devastation of World War I through art and architecture. For Mondrian, his abstract paintings composed of simplified line and color, expressed a universal notion of beauty that could be understood by all. During the final “transatlantic” phase of Mondrian’s career, which saw him move from Paris to London and then New York as he fled the chaos of World War II, he gradually incorporated color directly into the lines of the grid, along with a new, syncopated rhythm inspired by boogie-woogie jazz and the urban fabric of the 20th-century city. He lived in New York and continued painting until his death in 1944.
Drawn from
- Abstract by Choice, DMCA, 1957
- DMA unpublished material, "Learn About Piet Mondrian," Smartphone Tour, 2012.
- DMA Label copy (Piet Mondrian), 2010.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- YouTube~Watch this video about Piet Mondrian from the Tate, London.
- Khan Academy~Watch this video about Mondrian's 1929 Composition No. II, with Red and Blue.
- Mondrianmat~Use this simple website to make your own digital image inspired by Mondrian.
- The Mondrian Guide to Life~Browse this list of ways to incorporate the artist's aesthetics and techniques into your daily life. (Tate, 2014)
Notes
Dallas Museum of Art. Dallas Museum of Art Bulletin, 1987/88 Fall/Winter, Journal/Magazine/Newsletter, 1987; (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth224928/ : accessed January 21, 2015), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas , Texas.
See Mondrian- wall panel text from TAZ saved on my H drive
See Bolotowsky article on Neoplasticism, scanned from object file 2006.6, in Bolotowsky notebook.
Piet Mondrian’s first art teacher, J. B. Ueberfeldt, taught him using reproductions from 19th-century art journals. In 1892, Mondrian registered at the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunst in Amsterdam. During his early years in that city, the artist experimented with a variety of styles, including those of the Hague School, Amsterdam impressionism, and symbolism. His Country Road and Farm reflects the influence of impressionism in the Low Countries: he used a range of flowing brush strokes to create this picturesque landscape filled with trees and sheaves of wheat. The fluidity of Mondrian’s handling relates paintings such as this to those of Van Gogh. While in Amsterdam, Mondrian may well have visited the 1892 Van Gogh exhibition organized by Van Gogh’s sister-in-law, Joanna van Gogh. Like Mondrian, Van Gogh was dedicated to the material aspect of paint and to making his technique visible. Of course, Mondrian is best known for his geometric abstractions and collaboration with De Stijl in the 1920s. Much of this later mature work clearly relates to his earlier exploration of the elemental horizontals and verticals of this landscape.
See Hans Janssen and Joop M. Joosten, Mondrian 1892–1914: The Path to Abstraction, exh. cat. (Zwolle: Waanders Publishers; Fort Worth: Kimball Art Museum, 2002).
Excerpt from
Dorothy Kosinski, Van Gogh's Sheaves of Wheat (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2006), 110.
Born in Holland in 1872, schooled in the study of classical art so that he could become a drawing teacher, Piet Mondrian developed eventually into the most abstract of all the abstractionists. He was raised in an atmosphere of strict Calvinism and was deeply concerned throughout his life with the problem of expressing spiritual values through the medium of art.
His early paintings were softly realistic, then impressionistic. In 1912 Mondrian moved to Paris, where cubism was in full sway. There he toned down his colors and broke his composition into the abstract planes characteristic of that school. But Mondrian went further than the cubists. By 1921 he had achieved neo-plasticism, the style for which he became famous - the picture which is "nothing" but proportion and balance, where the use of vertical and horizontal black bars, of the three primary colors and of three values (black, gray and white) combine to please and to rest the eye.
Mondrian died in New York in 1944. Believing that art is a higher form than reality and that the pursuit of the spiritually absolute must void the world of appearances, he reduced his elements to the simplest and most pure available to the painter.
Excerpt from
Abstract by Choice, DMCA, 1957
"Learn About Piet Mondrian," DMA COLLECTION SMARTPHONE TOUR 2012
During his artistic studies, Piet Mondrian explored a variety of different styles in his paintings of the fields, rivers, and canals of his native Dutch landscape. Influenced by the work of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne (Say zan), and cubism, Mondrian’s paintings progressively became more abstract. Eventually, he eliminated all references to the natural world, creating an entirely non-representational art, which he called neo-plasticism. Mondrian joined forces with other artists in Holland who hoped to renew Europe after the devastation of World War I through art and architecture. For Mondrian, his abstract paintings composed of simplified line and color, expressed a universal notion of beauty that could be understood by all. Mondrian fled Europe for New York City in 1940, where he continued to paint until his death in 1944. He saw connections between his dynamically ordered abstract paintings and the pulsating rhythms of jazz and the bustling city.
DMA Label copy (Piet Mondrian), 2010.
The works by Piet Mondrian in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art constitute a true survey of the artist’s oeuvre, illustrating his transformation from a post-impressionist landscape painter to an austere abstract artist.
In his earliest works, Mondrian described the flat Dutch countryside with a sensuous, painterly touch or a divided, pointillist technique. Around 1910 Mondrian’s paintings and drawings began to reveal his growing interest in the vocabulary of cubism, which he used to describe the underlying structures of nature. He used an assertive network of linear forms to break the natural motif into a loose, organic grid.
Over the following decade, Mondrian gradually abandoned the task of representing nature. By the start of the 1920s, his grid had become a precise yet infinitely flexible armature for each new composition. He filled the grid with blocks of color in a limited range of hues: white, gray, and the primary colors of red, blue, and yellow.
During the final “transatlantic” phase of Mondrian’s career, which saw him move from Paris to London and then New York as he fled the chaos of World War II, he gradually incorporated color directly into the lines of the grid, along with a new, syncopated rhythm inspired by boogie-woogie jazz and the urban fabric of the 20th-century city.
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