Piet Mondrian 1872-1944

Early Life and Impact Mondrian was born in the Netherlands in 1872, and began painting as a student in 1892. He started his career as a teacher, but he also practiced his painting. His early works paintings were landscapes rendered in an Impressionistic style, but his style evolved to be more and more abstract. Mondrian’s most famous paintings are those of rectangles of white and primary colors dissected by black lines. Mondrian is regarded by many as the founder of abstract art.

EVOLUTION OF MONDRIAN’S STYLE In 1912, Mondrian moved to Paris, where his style continued to develop. Mondrian worked to reduce form and color to their simplest components – after a certain point painting only with black, white and the three primary colors of red, blue and yellow. Between 1914 and 1919 Mondrian became friends with some other artists and they began a new artistic movement known as De Stijl or Neoplasticism.

Late-Life work and Impact Mondrian moved to New York in 1940 to avoid the disruptions of World War II. Energized by the pace of city life, Mondrian was extremely productive and completed a large number of paintings. Mondrian’s late works used alternating colors and grid-like patterns to evoke the fast-paced rhythm of city streets. Mondrian died in 1944 and created about 250 paintings in his lifetime. His paintings became so famous that other painters, advertisers, architects and even fashion designers copied his style.