Driven to Abstraction: The Paintings of Piet Mondrian (excerpt)

Despite being well-known, often-parodied, and even trivialized, the paintings of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) exhibit a complexity that belies their apparent simplicity. The non-representational paintings for which Mondrian is best known, consisting of rectangular forms of red, yellow, blue, or black, separated by thick, black horizontal and vertical lines, are actually the result of a stylistic evolution that occurred over the course of nearly thirty years, and which continued beyond that point to the end of his life.

Mondrian’s early work consists largely of landscapes, pastoral images of his native Holland depicting windmills, fields, and rivers, initially in the Dutch Impressionist manner of the Hague School, and then using a variety of styles and techniques documenting his search for a personal voice. These paintings are most definitely representational, and illustrate the influence that various artistic movements had on Mondrian, including pointillism and the vivid colors of fauvism.

The earliest paintings that show an inkling of the abstraction to come are a series of canvases dating from 1905 to 1908, which depict dim scenes of indistinct trees and houses with reflections in still water that make them appear almost like Rorschach ink blots. However, although the end result leads the viewer to begin emphasizing the forms over the content, these paintings are still firmly rooted in nature, and it is only the knowledge of Mondrian’s later achievements that leads one to search for the roots of his future abstraction in these works.

In 1912, Mondrian moved to Paris and changed his name (from Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan) to emphasize his departure from life in provincial Holland. While in Paris, Mondrian was profoundly influenced by the cubism of Picasso and Braque, and this influence appeared almost immediately in his work. Paintings such as The Sea (1912) and his various studies of trees from that year still contain a measure of representation, but they are increasingly dominated by the geometric shapes and interlocking planes commonly found in cubism. However, while Mondrian was eager to absorb the cubist influence into his work, it seems clear that he saw cubism as a road leading to an end, rather than an end in itself.

Unlike the cubists, Mondrian was attempting to reconcile his painting with his spiritual pursuits, and in 1913, he began to fuse his art and his theosophical studies into a theory that signaled his final break from representational painting. World War I began while Mondrian was visiting home in 1914, and he was forced to remain in the Netherlands for the duration of the conflict. During this period, Mondrian stayed at the Laren artist’s colony, there meeting Bart van der Leck and Theo van Doesburg, both artists undergoing their own personal journeys toward abstraction at the time. With Van Doesburg, Mondrian founded De Stijl (The Style), a periodical in which he published his first essays defining his theory, for which he adopted the term neoplasticism.

When the war ended in 1919, Mondrian returned to France, where he would remain until 1938. Immersed in the crucible of artistic innovation that was post-war Paris, Mondrian flourished in an atmosphere of intellectual freedom that enabled him to courageously embrace an art of pure abstraction for the rest of his life. Mondrian began producing grid-based paintings in late 1919, and in 1920, the style for which he came to be renowned began to appear.

In the early paintings of this style, such as Composition A (1920) and Composition B (1920), the lines delineating the rectangular forms are relatively thin, and they are gray, not black. The lines also tend to fade as they approach the edge of the painting, rather than stopping abruptly. The forms themselves, smaller and more numerous than in later paintings, are filled with primary colors, black, or gray, and nearly all of them are colored; only a few are left white.

Beginning in late 1920 and 1921, Mondrian’s paintings take on what to casual observers is their definitive form. Thick black lines now separate the forms, which are larger and fewer in number, and more of them are left white than was previously the case. This was not the culmination of Mondrian’s artistic evolution, however. Although the refinements became more subtle, Mondrian’s work continued to evolve during his years in Paris.

Although the viewer is hampered by the toll that age and handling have obviously taken on Mondrian’s canvases, a close examination begins to reveal something of the artist’s method. Mondrian’s paintings are not composed of perfectly flat planes of color, as one might expect. Brush strokes are evident throughout, although they are subtle, and the artist appears to have used different techniques for the various elements of the painting.

The black lines are the flattest elements, with the least amount of depth. The colored forms have the most obvious brush strokes, all running in one direction. Most interesting, however, are the white forms, which clearly have been painted in layers, using brush strokes running in different directions. This generates a greater sense of depth in the white forms, as though they are overwhelming the lines and the colors, which indeed they were, as Mondrian’s paintings of this period came to be increasingly dominated by white space. 

As the years progressed, lines began to take precedence over forms in Mondrian’s painting. In the 1930s, he began to use thinner lines and double lines more frequently, punctuated with a few small colored forms, if any at all.

In September 1938, Mondrian left Paris in the face of advancing fascism and moved to London. After the Netherlands were invaded and Paris fell in 1940, he left London for New York, where he would remain until his death. Some of Mondrian’s later works are difficult to place in terms of his artistic development, because there were quite a few canvases that he began in Paris or London, which he only completed months or years later in New York. However, the finished works from this later period demonstrate an unprecedented busyness. They include more lines than any of his work since the 1920s, which he places in an overlapping manner that is almost cartographical in appearance.

The new canvases that Mondrian began in New York are startling, and indicate the beginning of a new idiom that was unfortunately cut short by the artist’s death. New York City (1942) is a complex lattice of red, blue, and yellow lines, occasionally interlacing to create a greater sense of depth than ever before. An unfinished 1941 version of this work uses strips of painted paper tape, which the artist could rearrange at will to experiment with different designs. Mondrian’s final works, Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942-3) and the unfinished Victory Boogie Woogie (1942-4), replace the solid lines with lines created from tiny adjoining rectangles of color, created in part using small pieces of paper tape in various colors. Larger unbounded rectangles of color punctuate the design, some with smaller concentric rectangles inside them. While Mondrian’s works of the 1920s and 1930s tend to have an almost scientific austerity about them, these are bright, lively paintings, reflecting the upbeat music that inspired them and the city in which they were made.

In these final works, the forms have usurped the role of the lines, opening another new door for Piet Mondrian’s development as an abstractionist. The “boogie woogie” paintings were clearly more of a revolutionary change than an evolutionary one, representing the most profound development in Mondrian’s work since his abandonment of representational art in 1913. Unfortunately, we were to have only a glimpse of this new innovation. Piet Mondrian died of pneumonia on 1 February 1944 at the age of 71.