Piet Mondrian

Pieter Cornelis (Piet) Mondrian (1872-1944) was born in Amersfoort, province of Utrecht in the Netherlands. The family moved to Winterswijk when his father, Pieter Cornelius Mondriaan, was appointed head teacher at a local primary school. Mondrian was introduced to art from an early age. His father was a qualified drawing teacher, and, with his uncle, Fritz Mondriaan (a pupil of Willem Maris of the Hague School of artists), Piet Mondrian often painted and drew along the river Gein.

In 1892, Mondrian entered the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten (academy of fine arts) in Amsterdam. He was already qualified as a teacher at that moment. He began his career as a teacher in primary education, but he also practiced painting. Most of his work from this period is Naturalistic or Impressionistic, consisting largely of landscapes. These pastoral images of his native country depict windmills, fields, and rivers, initially in the Dutch Impressionist manner of the Hague School and then in a variety of styles and techniques that attest to his search for a personal style. These paintings are representational, and they illustrate the influence that various artistic movements had on Mondrian, including Pointillism and the vivid colours of Fauvism.

Mondrian was a contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neoplasticism. This consisted of white ground, upon which he painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colours. Mondrian's arrival in Paris from the Netherlands in 1911 marked the beginning of a period of profound change. He encountered experiments in Cubism and with the intent of integrating himself within the Parisian avant-garde removed an 'a' from the Dutch spelling of his name (Mondriaan).

Mondrian's art was intimately related to his spiritual and philosophical studies. In 1908, he became interested in the theosophical movement launched by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in the late 19th century, and in 1909 he joined the Dutch branch of the Theosophical Society. While in Paris, the influence of the Cubist style of Picasso and Georges Braque appeared almost immediately in Mondrian's work. Unlike the Cubists, Mondrian still attempted to reconcile his painting with his spiritual pursuits, and in 1913 he began to fuse his art and his theosophical studies into a theory that signaled his final break from representational painting. While Mondrian was visiting home in 1914, World War I began, forcing him to remain in The Netherlands for the duration of the conflict. During this period, he stayed at the Laren (province North Holland) artist's colony, where he met Bart van der Leck and Theo van Doesburg, who were both undergoing their own personal journeys toward abstraction. Mondrian published ‘De Nieuwe Beelding in de schilderkunst’ (‘The New Plastic in Painting’) in twelve instalments during 1917 and 1918. This was his first major attempt to express his artistic theory in writing. When the war ended in 1918, Mondrian returned to France where he would remain until 1938. Immersed in the crucible of artistic innovation that was post-war Paris, he flourished in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom that enabled him to embrace an art of pure abstraction for the rest of his life. In 1938 he moved to London. Two years later he left London for Manhattan, where he would remain until his death. His best known work is the unfinished painting Victory Boogie Woogie (in the collection Kunstmuseum Den Haag). In New York he died of pneumonia at the age of 71. He was interred at the Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.