Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrain was born Pieter Cornelius Mondrain in 1872 in the Dutch town of Amersfoort. His father was a strict Calvinist schoolmaster who encouraged his son's interest in art by letting him work on some historical paintings. Still, when he decided to concentrate only on art, his family opposed him. In 1892, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam. He also became interested in Theosopy at this time, which would eventually lead him from his Calvinist upbringing.

His early works included many landscapes, which may have been influenced by his uncle Frits Mondrain, who was also an artist. But he soon became enthralled with the work of Van Gough and Munch,and his painting took a turn away from the soft colors of his landscapes,and his work of this period shows an almost expressionist, Munch-like approach to painting.

In 1911 he discovered Picasso and Georges Braque,and executed many works in the cubist style. But during World War I, Mondrain's interest in Theosopy deepened, and he became enamored of the writing of mathematician M.H.J. Schoenmaekers. Mondrain became fascinated with verticals and horizontals, as well as the use of three primary colors: red, blue and yellow. He also was influenced by the abstract work of Bart van der Leck, who painted large fields of color and abstract geometrical works.

Mondrian then met artist Theo Van Doesburg, who asked him to contribute his ideas on art to a journal he was publishing, called "De Stijl" ("The Style"). The first issue was completed in 1917, and it soon became the emblem of an entire movement of artists with similar ideas. Mondrain published his most famous theoretical work in De Stijl, "Neo-Plasticism in Painting," that same year, and in 1920 began changing his style of painting to the simple orthogonal and rectangles of color that became his trademark. Mondrian's adherence to the principals of the aesthetic of horizontal and vertical lines was so strict that when Van Doesburg decided to use diagonal lines in his "elemtarism," Mondrian ended his association with him, citing betrayal of their shared aesthetic principals.

During the twenties, Mondrian's fame grew, and he exhibited continuously, while still writing his essays on art. He moved to England in 1938, and then moved to New York in 1940 where he executed his famous works "Broadway Boogie Woogie" and "Victory Boogie Wooogie," the lines and movement in the works inspired by the rythmns in jazz. Unfortunately, the latter painting remained unfinished when Mondrain died in 1941 of pneumonia.

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