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Jp.A.Calosse

Mondrian

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), who can be assigned to the school of classical modernism, was born in Amersfort, Netherlands. After studying in Amsterdam, he started his artist´s career in the impressionist style as a figure and landscape painter. His works from these years showed the influence of Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) and of Fauvism, a French school from the beginning of the 20th century. When he traveled to Paris in 1911, he discovered Pablo Picasso´s works (1881–1973) and, with that, Cubism. He thereafter became a pioneer of abstract painting in the Netherlands. From the 1920s on, his paintings show a vertical and horizontal composition that, combined with the oppositions of blue, yellow, red, and noncolored spaces, turned into his trademark. His art was very appreciated in New York, where he spent his last years. Mondrian was not only a painter but also an art theoretician and cofounder of the art school De Stijl.
90 printed pages
Copyright owner
Parkstone International
Original publication
2004
Publication year
2011
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Quotes

  • Алёнаhas quoted4 years ago
    Mondrian carried the paintings through various stages in which, at first, he turned the elements into uniform planes colored in muted versions of the primaries.

    He separated the planes so that they seemed to float against a white background, but concluding that this effect was still too "natural," he then connected the planes in a regular grid covering either a rectangular or a diamond format.

    While the planes were still connected, in the next phase the artist made them larger and unequal in size and colored them in primaries or in values of black, white and gray.

    He attenuated the black planes to make them extend alongside the colored and non-colored planes.

    The blacks then served as structural bars holding the other planes together while at the same time making them more discrete. Like the canvas, the smaller rectangles or planes represented both form and space.

    The colors of these planes stood for the intensities and values of nature, cleansed and rendered to their primal color states - red, yellow, and blue - and primal noncolor states - black, white, and gray.

    Black planes performed multiple roles. In addition to their noncolor function, they were structural, determinate, and active. By creating paths of movement for the eye, black planes also added a sense of energy.

    Although the parts were important, the artist wanted always to emphasize their subordination to the harmony of the whole. Different in size and color, they had equal value, or equivalence because of their similar nature
  • Алёнаhas quoted4 years ago
    Mondrian carried the paintings through various stages in which, at first, he turned the elements into uniform planes colored in muted versions of the primaries.
  • Алёнаhas quoted4 years ago
    Of greatest importance to the artist's development was Theo van Doesburg, who proposed that artists who were willing to sacrifice their "ambitious individuality" should form a "spiritual community" around a periodical published under the name De Stijl ['Style'].

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