Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) pioneered abstract painting in Amsterdam in the early 20th century. Breaking from standards of figurative realism, he began using the modernist building blocks of pure form and colour to depict the world around him. While his early landscapes appear traditional, by 1905 he had started using trees and horizon lines to emphasize background colours and to structure the spaces in his compositions.
Mondrian devoted himself to devising an art of “universal beauty” grounded in what he termed “pure plastic art,” and alongside Theo van Doesburg, he founded the Dutch art movement known as De Stijl or Neoplasticism in 1917. His new paintings treated colour itself as modifiable material, so that looking at them might be a unique experience of considering movement and organisation. By restricting himself to primary colours (red, blue, and yellow), primary values (black, white, and grey), and primary directions (horizontal and vertical), Mondrian created what he believed was a precise method toward beauty. He played with various combinations of these factors in his Compositions, decreasing the number of coloured segments and darkening and widening his dividing lines.
Upon his arrival in New York City in 1940, Mondrian began revisiting his long-held practice of moving coloured rectangles of paper around his studio, and his typical black compositional lines started to incorporate the primary colours. Blue and yellow jostle freely in these paintings that appear like maps, or indeed scores for city life—but this new period of experimentation was cut short by his death in 1944.
Part 2 of a 4-part series on the works of Piet Mondrian:
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| c1907 Two Windmills oil on canvas 82.6 x 115.6 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| c1907 Red Amaryllis with Blue Background watercolour on paper 46.5 x 33 cm MoMA, New York |
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| c1907 Geinrust Farm oil on canvas 47 x 63.5 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1908 The Winkel Mill, Pointillist Version oil on canvas 43.1 x 34.6 cm Dallas Museum of Art, Texas |
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| 1908 Study of a Dahlia (Sketchbook Sheet) graphite 31.8 x 22.9 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1908 Study of a Dahlia (Sketchbook Sheet) graphite 31.8 x 22.9 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1908 Study of a Dahlia (Sketchbook Sheet) graphite 31.8 x 22.9 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1908 Study of a Dahlia (Sketchbook Sheet) graphite 31.8 x 22.9 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1908 Study of a Dahlia (Sketchbook Sheet) graphite 30.5 x 21.6 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1908 Golden Lilly (Amaryllis) transparent and opaque watercolour over graphite 25.4 x 19.1 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1908 Mauve Chrysanthemum watercolour over graphite 21 x 19.1 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| c1908-09 Chrysanthemum conté crayon on paperboard 25.4 x 28.6 cm Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| 1908-09 Chrysanthemum Study transparent and opaque watercolour over graphite 26.4 x 15.9 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1908-09 Apple Tree, Pointillist Version oil on composition board 56.8 x 74.9 cm Dallas Museum of Art, TX |
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| c1908 Upright Sunflower brush and ink, watercolour, and pastel 94 x 37.5 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| c1908 Haystacks II oil on canvas mounted on cardboard. 34.5 x 43.2 Location unknown |
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| c1908 Haystacks III oil on canvas 35 x 45 cm |
1909 View from the Dunes with Beach and Piers, Domburg
This is one of several studies of the seascape at Domburg, The Netherlands, where Mondrian sometimes summered. Here he offers an oblique view of the coastline, depicting dunes on the left, sea on the right, and sky above, rendered in stark orange and blue horizontals. The painting's vibrant coloring and thickly applied lines demonstrate the artist's transition from an earlier naturalism to a period of formal experimentation. Mondrian would later recall that he had preferred to paint "in gray, dark weather or in very strong sunlight, when the density of the atmosphere obscures the details and accentuates the large outlines of objects.”
MoMA, New York
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| 1909 View from the Dunes with Beach and Piers, Domburg oil and pencil on cardboard 28.5 x 38.5 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1909 By the Sea oil on cardboard 40 x 45.7 cm Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT |
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| 1909 Beach with Three or Four Piers at Domburg oil on canvas 33 x 43.2 cm Kröller-Müller Museum Otterlo, Netherlands |
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| 1909 Beach with Five Piers at Domburg oil on canvas on board 33 x 41.9 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| c1909 A Rose watercolour 28.5 x 21 cm Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam |
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| 1909-10 Sun, Church in Zeeland oil on canvas 90.5 x 62.1 cm Tate Gallery, London |
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| 1910 Summer, Dune in Zeeland oil on canvas 134 x 194.9 cm Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| c1910 The Ruin of Brederode oil on cardboard 52.3 x 69.5 cm Rans Hals Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands |
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| c1910 Buildings graphite on paper 24.1 x 31.8 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1911 Self-Portrait charcoal on paper 28.3 x 23.3 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| c1911 Trees graphite on paper 17.5 x 12.4 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1911-12 Still Life with Gingerpot I oil on canvas 65.5 x 75 cm Guggenheim Museum, New York |
1911-12 Still Life with Gingerpot II
Still Life with Gingerpot II takes the artist’s first depiction of this motif to a much greater level of abstraction. The grid framework now interpolates the objects on the tabletop, and no vestiges of the glassware, stacked canvases, or window frame of the earlier composition remain. Mondrian’s works of this period are characterized by a strong central motif (here the gingerpot) around which the rest of the picture revolves in a symmetrical fashion. While in later paintings Mondrian developed a more dispersed field, his overarching concern for balance and order remained constant.
Guggenheim Museum, New York
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| 1911-12 Still Life with Gingerpot II oil on canvas 91.5 x 120 cm Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| c1912 Trees oil on canvas 93.9 x 71.7 cm Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA |
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| c1912 Apple Tree charcoal 46.4 x 61.6 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1912 Eucalyptus (compositional study) oil on canvas 50.8 x 39.4 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| c1912 Composition No. XI oil on canvas 75.6 x 57 cm Kröller-Müller Museum Otterlo, Netherlands |
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| 1913 Composition No. II oil on canvas 88 x 115 cm Kröller-Müller Museum Otterlo, Netherlands |
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| 1913 Composition in Brown and Grey oil on canvas 87.7 x 75.6 cm MoMA, New York |
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| 1913 Composition No. XIII / Composition 2 oil on canvas 79.5 x 63.5 cm Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| 1913 Composition XIV oil on canvas 93.8 x 64.7 cm Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands |
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| 1913 Tableau no.1 oil on canvas 96 x 64 cm Kröller-Müller Museum Otterlo, Netherlands |
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| 1913 Tableau No. 2 / Composition No. VII oil on canvas 105.1 x 114.3 cm Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| c1913 The Tree A oil on canvas 100.3 x 67.3 cm Tate Gallery, London |
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