Great Falls Elementary Art Enrichment September-November 2018 Piet Mondrian ( )

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1 Slide 1 With only black lines, black, white and gray spaces, and the three primary colors of red, yellow and blue, Piet Mondrian created a geometric utopia. Self Portrait, 1918 Portrait 2: Mondrian, by Roberto Voorbij The most radical abstractionist of the 20 th century, Mondrian rejected not only representation but also expression and emotion in art. He believed that art was meant to reflect the harmony and equilibrium of the universe and to enlighten mankind, and he created an entirely new artistic language for that purpose. In Mondrian s art, the opposition of vertical and horizontal lines and planes of color and non-color in endlessly varying relations and proportions produces an aesthetic unique for its simplicity and clarity. Slide 2 Oostzidje Mill with Extended Blue, Yellow and Purple Sky, Mill; Mill in Sunlight, 1908 Trees on the Geine: Rising Moon, Mill; The Red Mill, 1911 Mondrian grew up in a small town in Holland, and his artistic talent was fostered by his father, a strict Calvinist schoolmaster with whom he collaborated on a series of didactic historic paintings, and his painter uncle, whose naturalistic Dutch landscapes would influence Mondrian s own early landscapes. At 20, Mondrian moved to Amsterdam to study art, and he spent his 20s and early 30s painting traditional works while earning a living by selling copies of paintings in the city s Rijksmuseum. 1

2 Slide 3 The Red Cloud, circa 1907 The Red Tree, The Gray Tree, 1911 In 1907, at age 35, Mondrian discovered the more adventuresome art of fellow Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and Norwegian Edvard Munch. Dune Landscape, 1911 This led to Mondrian s first steps away from representational art, as he began applying arbitrary colors to traditional landscapes, theorizing that since the colors of nature could never be reproduced accurately, he might as well apply others with different aims. Slide 4 Composition in Oval with Color Surfaces 2, 1914 Composition: Checkerboard, Dark Colors, 1919 Composition No. 3 with Color Boxes, 1917 Raster Composition 9: Checkerboard Composition Bright Colors, 1919 In 1911, Mondrian discovered the works of two more artists working in Paris, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braques, and decided to move to Paris himself at the age of 39. Tableau No. 2, Composition No. VII, 1913 Composition No. 10 Pier and Ocean, 1915 While there, he experimented with his own form of synthetic cubism, gradually moving away from even the altered representational character of classic cubist works and toward what would become his own pared down geometric style. 2

3 Slide 5 Maison Particuliere, Theo van Doesburg and Cornelus van Eesteren 1921 Issue of De Stijl with Cover Art by Theo van Doesburg World War I broke out while Mondrian was visiting his father in Holland, and he was obliged to remain there for the duration of the war. It was during this time that Mondrian established the foundations for the art that would bring him fame. He was introduced to the works of philosopher and mathematician M.H.J Schoenmakers, who believed the key elements of the universe were contained in the vertical lines and yellow color of the sun s rays and the horizontal lines and blue color of the earth s orbit around the sun, as well as the red color that the union of the sun and sky at sunset. Mondrian also met Theo van Doesburg, in whose influential art journal De Stijl (The Style) Mondrian published his first important theoretical work, Neo-Plasticism in Painting. Mondrian aligned with van Doesburg until 1925, when van Doesburg began to incorporate the diagonal line into his paintings, which Mondrian regarded as a betrayal! Slide 6 Composition A, 1920 In 1919, Mondrian returned to Paris, where the austerity of his studio was legendary. The space had only bare walls, scarcely any furnishings and only a single allusion to nature: an artificial flower painted white(!). There in 1920, at age 48, Mondrian painted Composition A, the first work in the classically Mondrian style, which he would employ and refine for the rest of his life. 3

4 Slide 7 Besides its limited palette of three colors and three non-colors and its restriction to horizontal and vertical black lines, the Mondrian style is distinguished by its strong asymmetry. Composition with Red, Black, Yellow, Blue and Gray, 1921 Tableau I (Painting I), 1921 The only true symmetry in his work is the canvas itself, which is either a square or a diamond. The squares painted on the canvas are not, in fact, geometrically precise, but they create the illusion of squares regularity, an optical trick that was famously applied in the Parthenon. Similarly, there is no symmetry in the planes of color and non-color. Balance is instead achieved by pairing a large surface of non-color with a much smaller one of either color or matter. Slide 8 Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow, 1930 Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Gray and Blue, 1921 Composition No. 2, 1920 Although the self-imposed restrictions might seem to allow for little variation, there is in fact an infinite set of possible arrangements, and Mondrian underwent endless trial and error to arrive at his final compositions. Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue, 1942 New York City I, 1942 His exquisite sense for just the right combination of elements is demonstrated by the fact that experts have no difficulty in distinguishing his own work from imitations. 4

5 Slide 9 Tableau I, Lozenge with Four Lines and Gray, 1926 Composition with Yellow Lines, 1933 Composition with Lines and with Color, 1937 Furthermore, with each consecutive painting, Mondrian surpassed himself in the simplicity and mastery of his elements. During the 1920s and 30s, he gradually extended his grid, which had initially stopped short of the canvas s edge, to the outer border. He also began painting on diamond, or lozenge, shaped canvases, and both changes served to expand the reach of his paintings beyond the canvas. The rigorous restriction of his artistic means led him to use each of the three primary colors only once in a given work, and he eventually painted a number of paintings using only one or two colors or non-colors. Slide 10 By the late 1930s, as World War II threatened, colors occupied progressively less space in Mondrian s works. Composition in White, Black and Red, Paris, 1936 Trafalgar Square, Mondrian fled occupied France for London, where his grid became more complex and dense, incorporating double as well as single lines, and he was inspired to paint London s Trafalgar Square in

6 Slide 11 Broadway Boogie-Woogie, Victory Boogie-Woogie, 1944 The Blitz then prompted him to flee London for New York, where he painted the vibrant and joyous pieces that would stand as his final masterpieces: Broadway Boogie- Woogie, painted in after arriving in New York, and the unfinished Victory Boogie-Woogie, painted in anticipation of the Allied victory over Germany but interrupted by Mondrian s death from pneumonia in 1944 at age 72. In both works, the balance of color and non-color has shifted back dramatically in favor of color, which appears in small, lively patches instead of large, serene planes and is no longer confined by black lines. The paintings are a stylized evocation of New York City its urban grid of streets, its bright lights and vitality as well as a visual interpretation of the syncopated, staccato rhythms of the big band and jazz music of the time. (Mondrian believed that both music and art offered abstract means of revealing the beauty and harmony of the universe, and many of his works have musical titles, like Composition or Foxtrot. Mondrian s final two paintings are also, however, a celebration of freedom and victory, and the restoration of the equilibrium that Mondrian so cherished. 6

7 Slide 12 Taishi Boogie Woogie Sculpture, by Wei Lung City Hall, The Hague, aka the world s largest Mondrian Painting, by Richard Meier, 1986 Over time, Mondrian s aesthetic has permeated the culture, showing up everywhere from high fashion, design and architecture to cool sneakers and everyday drugstore shampoos. Mondrian Dress, by Yves Saint Laurent, 1965 Slide 13 Painting No. 9, , Phillips Collection Tableau No. IV, Lozenge Composition with Red, Gray, Blue, Yellow and Black, , National Gallery of Art Composition No. III, 1921, Phillips Collection You can see three of Mondrian s classic works here in Washington, D.C., at any time, at the National Gallery and the Phillips Collection. 7