Piet Mondrian

Biography of Piet Mondrian

Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan was born on March 7, 1872, in Amersfoort, Netherlands. The son of a schoolteacher, he initially considered becoming an art teacher before abandoning the idea to express himself solely as a creator.

Mondrian's intellectual and spiritual approach completely underpins his painting.

After an early period during which Van Gogh and Van Dongen strongly influenced his style, he quickly "radicalized," moving towards a painting where the concern for simplification is the primary creative driver. "The Mill in the Sun" is one of the early examples. Light is treated using primary colors, and the forms are already highly schematized.

But it is in absolute simplification that Mondrian found his true path. Rigor, as well as mathematics and theosophy, were the milestones of his research, which ultimately led, pictorially, to a mixture of "non-colors" (black, white, and gray) and primary colors (red, blue, and pale yellow). The former are used to trace vertical or horizontal lines, while the latter fill some of the spaces formed by the lines.

As a proponent of Abstraction, having been influenced by Fauvism, Symbolism, or Analytical Cubism, Mondrian developed his own theories to develop a pictorial art of which he is the principal (if not the sole) representative, although his theories have found numerous echoes both among the painters of his time (notably at the Bauhaus) and among architects (including Frank Lloyd Wright) and modern designers.

Mondrian passed away in New York in 1944, leaving his final painting "Victory Boogie-Woogie" unfinished.

(c) Natacha PELLETIER for PASSION ESTAMPES