Piet Mondrian

(1872-1944)

Was a Dutch painter who went to Paris in 1911 and abandoned his realistic landscapes for Cubist ones. In 1914 Mondrian returned to Holland and had six essays published in the first number of De-Stijl, but he lived in Paris 1919-38, then in London. Mondrian went to New York in I940, where he exerted great influence on the development of the New York School. His form of abstraction was a peculiarly rigorous one known as Neo-Plasticism, which consists principally of restricting forms to purely geo­metrical shapes, set at right angles to the horizontal or vertical axes and coloured in the three primary colors, and white, black, or grey. Mondrian came from a Calvinist background. The only enlivening touch he permitted himself was in his titles Boogie- Woogie, for example (he was a jazz enthusiast).

Mondrian’s famous oil paintings include:

• Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue and Black
• New York City II
• Broadway Boogie-Woogie
• Windmill
• The Red Tree
• Still Life with Gingerpot II
• The Gray Tree
• Composition No.10 Pier and Ocean
• Composition, 1916