Architecture research- Piet Mondrian

‘Every true artist has been inspired more by the beauty of lines and colour and the relationships between them than by the concrete subject of the picture’.

Mondrian was born 1872 and died 1944, he was the ‘Dutch pioneer of abstract art, who developed from early landscape pictures to geometric abstract works of a most rigorous kind.’

Mondrian took an interest into impressionist techniques during his early works, which were paintings and images made up of small brush strokes and enabled the artist to depict the specific shades of colour, light and shadow.

‘Like Van Gogh, Mondrian used pure, glowing colours and expressive brushwork under the influence of Pointillism and Fauvism’.

Fauvism is in the style of a group of 20th century modern artists named ‘les Fauves’, ‘whose works emphasised painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism’, this movement was a development of abstract art as it enabled the artist to focus more on shape and colour compared to making the painting/drawing completely accurate.

During the first decade of the 20th century Mondrian began to make a change in his style of work, ‘his works start moving towards a pointillist and cubist style, as well as other abstract mediums that he engaged in at this early stage of his career’, Mondrian becomes more and more interested and influenced by abstract works.

During 1911 he saw Pablo Picasso’s cubist works and was intrigued, from then he immediately began to use the concept of cubism in his own way. Moreover during 1914 he returned to his home in the Netherlands to visit his father as he was ill, however the world war then began and stopped Mondrian from returning to Paris. He then decided to work on an abstract style called ‘neoplastic’, this was another development and form of abstract art; ‘the basic elements of painting- colour, line form- were used only in their purest, most fundamental state: only primary colours and non-colours, only squares and rectangles, only straight and horizontal or vertical lines.’ Mondrian used the method of simplifying and breaking down an image to only using specific colour and line.

The main aspect of Mondrian’s life and work is at this stage in his life, ‘in 1932, a major retrospective exhibition of Mondrian’s work was held at the stedlijik musuem’, moreover, ‘it was around this time that the painter began to be fascinated with the idea of the line and dismantling the very definition of painting.’ This inspires me because throughout Mondrian’s life he developed abstract art and gave a meaning and a sense of intelligence behind it, simple shapes, line look plain and simple on a page but can be hiding a whole different meaning.