Pieter Cornelis Mondrian was
born on March 7th 1872 in Amersvoort in
central Holland and lived there for the
first eight years of his life. He was
the second child of four, with two
brothers and one sister. His father
Pieter Cornelis Sr. was headmaster of an
elementary school, a gifted draftsman
and amateur artist. Uncle Frits
Mondrian was a self-taught painter
and commercially successful, even the
Russian court bought his work. As Piet
Jr. progressed towards abstract art, he
came into conflict with uncle Frits,
which seems to have had something to do
with Piet Mondrian signing his paintings
with "Piet Mondrian" (instead of
Mondriaan) from 1912 on.
The Mondrians, devout Calvinists, were
an artistic family who painted and made
music and Mondrian Sr. could afford a
decent education for his four children.
Early on Piet Jr. proved to have a
talent for drawing. His father gave him
drawing lessons and took his son to the
countryside to sketch. Uncle Frits
taught him the basics of painting.
As a teenager Mondrian was
thoroughly educated in drawing and
visited several schools. His education
was complemented by a retired
art-teacher Baet van Ueberfeldt.
Mondrian Sr. intended his son to become
a drawing teacher so that Piet would be
able to make a living. Mondrian won his
licences and was allowed to teach at
primary and secondary schools. With his
licences under his belt, having
fulfilled his father's demands, Piet
Mondrian decided to become an artist,
not a teacher, in 1892. His father could
not afford an education at the National
Academy of Art in Amsterdam, but Uncle
Frits managed to obtain an allowance for
Piet Mondrian; he was 20 when he moved
to Amsterdam.
There he studied either full time or
attended evening classes and joined
several artist's societies where he
exhibited his work, for the first time
in 1893 (he was 21). He got some
commissions, like a ceiling painting and
he applied for several prizes, with
varying degree of success. In 1903 (at
31) he won his first prize from the "Arti
et Amicitae Society". Traveling back and
forth between Amsterdam and various
parts of rural Holland he devoted
practically all of his time to painting
landscapes, first in the style of the
"The Hague School", then gradually more
and more abstract, omitting details he
regarded as irrelevant. The more
abstract his work became, the more
appreciation and recognition he gained
from fellow
artists and other forward thinking
contemporaries, at the same time the
more criticism he met, particularly from
Dutch art critics, "This man is totally
confused". Particularly important were
his trips to Domburg, a small town on an
island, that was turned into an artist's
community by Jan Toorop, one of the
leading Dutch artists then, not in the
least because of his organizational
flair. Toorop acted as the principle
intermediate between the Dutch and
French art communities and devoted much
of his time to bringing artists
together.
In 1909 Piet Mondrian joined a
theosophical society, which not only
meant a definitive break with the
orthodox Christian believe-system of his
parents, but also became the foundation
of his thinking and the intellectual
side of his art. In these years
Mondrian begins to resemble Rasputin
in appearance (at least I think so) and
he meditates. Like many artists of his
time, Mondrian can be regarded as a
hippy "avant la letre", although later
his appearance changes again, making him
a sharply dressed man, indistinguishable
from your average stockbroker or
bookkeeper. This change may be connected
to his love of nature and the country,
changing into a preference for the city.
In his work this translates into his
initial interest in the quasi random and
disorderly quality of nature (the way
branches on trees grow, the shape and
distribution of clouds), which then
changes into his well known paintings
that consist of horizontal and vertical
lines, the horizontal representing
femininity and the worldly, the vertical
masculinity and the spiritual. In his
neo-plasticism he aimed to create a
balance between the horizontal and the
vertical, in tune with the laws of the
universe, as he saw them, and his
theosophical believes.
Around 1909, 1910 his breakthrough came
insofar that he came to be regarded as
one of the leaders of the Dutch
avant-garde, of course still getting bad
journalistic criticism. In 1910 he
became a full member of the jury of an
art society. In 1911 he was exposed for
the first time by the works of the
cubists Braque and
Picasso, at an exhibition in
Amsterdam. It is assumed that this made
him want to move to Paris, the center of
French art and
cubism. Arriving in Paris in 1912,
he quickly became internationally famous
with exhibitions in Paris and Berlin.
Piet Mondrian lived in Montparnasse,
near the Eiffel Tower and enjoyed the
city, with it's exhibitions, parties and
night-life. He was an avid dancer,
preferably with young women. Piet
Mondrian sold little in Paris, but made
a living copying famous paintings from
the Louvre.
In 1914 World War I began. Piet Mondrian
had returned to Holland to visit his
father who was mortally ill. Trapped in
Holland, Piet Mondrian would not see
Paris for four years because of the war,
his equipment and paintings still in
Paris. His father died in 1915. In that
year he moved to Laren, in Holland,
which then was an artist's community
attracting artists like Van Der Leck and
Van Doesburg. The latter founded a
magazine called "De Stijl" (The Style)
for which Piet Mondrian wrote a few
articles. Van Doesburg brought together
a group of artists that contributed to
the magazine. They were of the opinion
that artists, architects and sculptors
should work together to create a new
society that would be in tune with "the
laws of the universe". The art that went
with it should be clear in form and
spiritual, as opposed to earthly.
Natural forms were earthly, straight
lines and angles spiritual. Thus "it
would not be impossible to create a
paradise on Earth", they said. Now De
Stijl is known as an art movement,
almost synonymous with the red, yellow
and blue neo-plasticism paintings
of Piet Mondrian.
Not feeling at home in Holland, Piet
Mondrian returned to Paris in 1919,
where he had a book published, called
Le Néo-Plasticisme, containing his
essays written for De Stijl and it was
translated in German in 1925. In Paris
he had some more exhibitions, joined an
art group, but perhaps most importantly,
he met the American artist Harry
Holtzman in Paris, in 1934. Holtzman
later enabled Piet Mondrian to go to
America, where he had his finest years
as an artist.
While in Paris, he painted the walls and
furniture of his Paris apartment/studio
white and decorated the walls with grey
and red cartboard rectangles, as he was
living within a painting of his.
During his years in Paris, Mondrian's
reputation as an international
representative of abstract art grew, but
with art-insiders particularly. His
paintings still didn't fetch high prices
as they never would during his lifetime.
Mondrian didn't really seem to mind. He
had fulfilled his artistic dreams.
After Hitler had come to power in 1933,
Mondrian's work was put on the list of "Entartete
Kunst" (degenerate art). Presumably
having learned from his experiences
during World War I, in which he had to
leave all his paintings in Paris,
Mondrian left Paris in September 1938,
before the German invasion. He lived for
two years his London where he became
befriended with artists such as Barbara
Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. As the
Germans increased pressure on England,
Mondrian left London in September 1940,
in the midst of the blitz.
On borrowed money, Mondrian arrived in
New York in October 1940. Harry Holtzman
had found and paid for his apartment and
studio and introduced him to his
friends. In New York Mondrian concluded
his career with monumental works like "Broadway
Boogie-Woogie" and (the unfinished)
"Victory Boogie-Woogie".
In 1944 (he was almost 72) Piet
Mondrian died of pneumonia in a New York
hospital.
This concludes this site's biography of
Piet Mondrian. The next part represents
this author's view on Piet Mondrian and
his work.
Tribute to Piet Mondrian
One can arbitrarily divide Piet
Mondrian's work into two, the dividing
line being his "Tree series". Most first
class artists would have been satisfied
going on with painting trees the way
Mondrian did. I can't think of any other
painting that conveys the soul of the
Northern European landscape more deeply
as his trees. Mondrian's "Red Tree",
"Blue Tree" and "Grey Tree" are artistic
masterpieces. Technically however, they
look strangely insecure. With the "Red
Tree" Mondrian seemed unable to render
the foreground as convincingly as the
rest. Two artists can arrive at the same
point independently, but it seems likely
that, like many artists of his
generation, he was inspired by Vincent
van Gogh while making the "Red Tree". A
serious artist who tries to "paint like
Van Gogh" is in trouble, however. Van
Gogh is one the greatest "composers" in
the history of the visual arts.
Composing in this context, is meant to
represent the ability to fit a great
many details together in the best
possible coherence. Mondrian was a very
able landscape artist, but to paint in
Van Gogh's expressive semi-abstract
style is another matter. I hypothesize
that Mondrian was overtaxed. The "Grey
Tree" represents the limit (now in a
cubist style) of how far Mondrian could
go in creating a
composition that is "spontaneously"
painted, with semi-improvised
brush-strokes.
It has been suggested that Mondrian
pursued an abstract style to break with
his domineering father, who was a
draftsman and strict naturalist. One can
always come up with some kind of
Neo-Freudian speculation on another
man's mind; it seems more sensible to
look for an artistic explanation, which
there is, in my opinion.
Mondrian was, not commercially or
socially, but artistically ambitious. He
wanted to paint like the great, but ran
into the limits of his ability. Mondrian
could draw very well, he was
well-trained and his drawings do not
should show any signs of insecurity.
"The whims of nature" can be captured
with a pencil on paper, but painting
adds other dimensions, such as color and
the texture of the paint. Whether his
presumed inability to render nature as
he wanted is responsible for his growing
dislike of nature, that developed during
his life is an open question. Abstract
painting however, has the advantage that
it's a more controlled environment. The
abstract artist has a greater freedom to
define his own artistic and technical
parameters than the naturalist.
Mondrian's earlier neo-plastic works are
compositionally quite simple, with
carefully arranged rectangles, but with
few details. In New York however, he
created his "Boogie Woogie" paintings,
which to my mind are among the best
compositions of the 20th century. And
thus Mondrian achieved his goal: to
become one of the greatest painters in
history.
While he had stretched his talent to the
limit 20 years earlier, in the
subsequent period he cleverly and
intelligently developed a style that
enabled him to circumvent his
limitations and turn his career into an
absolute success.
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