Artist
Piet Mondrian
1872–1944 · Dutch
Piet Mondrian began with Dutch landscapes before a 1911 encounter with Cubism accelerated his move toward abstraction. After relocating to Paris, he progressively reduced trees, architecture and landscape into interlocking verticals and horizontals. During World War I in the Netherlands he developed the principles that would become Neo-Plasticism and, with Theo van Doesburg and other artists around De Stijl, argued for an art built from elemental relations. Mondrian returned to Paris in 1919, fled to London in 1938 and moved to New York in 1940. There, his grid loosened into the syncopated color rhythms of Broadway Boogie Woogie and the unfinished Victory Boogie Woogie.
Painting; drawing
Major Works
- 1908–10The Red Tree (Evening; Red Tree) →Oil on canvasKunstmuseum Den Haag
- 1911The Gray Tree →Oil on canvasKunstmuseum Den Haag
- 1913Tableau No. 2 / Composition No. VII →Oil on canvasSolomon R. Guggenheim Museum
- 1920Composition C →Oil on canvasMoMA
- 1921Composition with Red, Blue, Black, Yellow, and Gray →Oil on canvasMoMA
- 1926Tableau I: Lozenge with Four Lines and Gray →Oil on canvasMoMA
- 1933Composition with Red and Blue →Oil on canvasMoMA
- 1939–43Trafalgar Square →Oil on canvasMoMA
- 1942–43Broadway Boogie Woogie →Oil on canvasMoMA
- 1942–44Victory Boogie Woogie →Oil, paper and tape on canvasKunstmuseum Den Haag
Museums
Related Artists
- Theo van Doesburg →
- Bart van der Leck →
- Pablo Picasso
- Georges Braque →
- Marlow Moss
Selected Exhibitions
- 1917 Formation of De StijlHistorical milestonegroup
- 1945 Piet Mondrian memorial exhibition, MoMAMuseum exhibitiongroup
- 1995–96 Piet Mondrian: 1872–1944, MoMAMuseum retrospectivegroup
Interviews & Writing
- Museum-quality video search →RESEARCH QUEUEvideo