Piet Mondrian was
born in the Netherlands in
1872. He was influenced by
many artistic styles and even
helped create an artistic
movement called De Stijl. The
paintings that Piet Mondrian
is most famous for are
rectangles of white and
primary colors (red, blue, and
yellow), divided by black
lines. He died in 1944, having
created about 250 paintings in
his lifetime.
Piet Mondrian was born in
Amersfoort in the Netherlands,
in 1872. He was the second of
his parent's children. At a very
young age his father Pieter and
his Uncle Fritz, both artists
themselves, introduced Piet to
the world of art.
In 1892, Mondrian entered the
Academy for Fine Art in
Amsterdam as a teacher. While
teaching at the academy he also
practiced his
painting. Most of his paintings
from this period were of
landscapes. These paintings of
Holland included fields, cows
and windmills. These paintings
showed the influence that the
pointillist (painting with dots)
and fauvist (bright colors)
movements had on him.
Mondrian’s first paintings
showed landscapes found in real
life. They were done in a style
close to impressionism. As his
style grew and changed, he
stopped using any colors besides
the three primaries: red,
yellow, and blue. The landscape
painting shown here is Avond
Evening Red Tree. This is
the first painting in which
Mondrian used only primary
colors, but you can still see
some impressionism.
Mondrian soon became interested
in cubism. Cubism is an artistic
style in which the subject is
broken into meaningful pieces
and rearranged in a new order to
show the most important parts of
the object. The painting shown
here is called, Still Life
with Ginger Pot, and was
painted by Mondrian in the
cubist style. Because of the
influence of cubism, Mondrian’s
paintings became more and more
abstract. Mondrian moved to
Paris in 1912 so he could
continue to study cubism.
In 1914 Mondrian returned home
just before World War I broke
out. He stayed there for the
duration of the war (1914-1919). During
this time he became friends with
some other artists and together
they began a new movement, De
Stijl. The movement was called De
Stijl because that was the name
of the journal that Mondrian and
his friends started. They called
the movement neoplasticism and today
both names are correct.
The members of the De Stijl
movement were searching to paint
an even more honest truth than
the cubists. They believed the
essence or foundation of all
things could be found in the
simplest form: straight lines
and primary colors. So Mondrian
began painting pieces like this
one called Composition.
Piet Mondrian died of pneumonia
in New York City on Feb. 1,
1944. His paintings became so
famous in the decades that
followed that other painters,
advertisers, architects, graphic
designers, and even high fashion
clothing designers around the
world copied his special style.
