Red Amaryllis with Blue Background

Before Piet Mondrian pioneered an art of pure form he was painting figuratively. You may be surprised seeing today's watercolor - it's Mondrian's study of flower. The artist repeated depiction of flowers at the beginning of his painting career. It reflects an interest in nature that has often been linked to Theosophy, a branch of spiritual thought that stresses the existence of a universal harmony beneath the visible world. 

While these in fact metaphysical depictions of natural subjects might seem to be the antithesis of the what we mostly know about Mondrian which is of course, his famous reduced grids, they prefigure the artist’s obsession with form. “I enjoyed painting flowers, not bouquets, but a single flower at a time, in order that I might better express its plastic structure,” Mondrian once said.