From 1920 onwards, Mondrian consistently follows his New Design. The first works he completes according to the new principle contain fields in the three primary colors, as well as in gray, light blue, or orange. In the following years, he increasingly reduces the color scheme and adds white surfaces.
1921
Composition with Red, Black, Yellow, Blue, and Gray
Mondrian by no means stops experimenting. Thus, from 1928 on, he is interested in the square canvas as a base form for composition, as well as in the influence of the double black line on the overall structure.
Mondrian does not plan his paintings in advance, but rather develops the compositions searchingly on the canvas itself. He works on them until the individual elements of the picture are in harmonious balance with each other. For this, he repeatedly alters and overpaints the compositions.
Since the 1920s, democracy is suppressed in many countries.
After the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor in January 1933, the National Socialist regime begins to ruthlessly implement its unrestricted claim to leadership beyond the borders of the German Republic. Cultural policy is also massively affected. In 1937, the propaganda exhibition titled Degenerate Art opens in Munich, where, among other things, paintings by Piet Mondrian were shown. Artists whose works are on display there had been experiencing systematic exclusion and persecution since as early as 1933.
1937
View of the Degenerate Art Exhibition (Entartete Kunst) in the arcades of the Hofgarten, Munich, opened on July 19, 1937.
With the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the Second World War begins. Many European artists, including Max Beckmann, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Lotte Laserstein, Kurt Schwitters, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, flee into exile.
As early as 1938, the threat of war also prompts Piet Mondrian to flee from Paris to London. In the fall of 1940, he emigrates via Great Britain to New York. Here, he can live and work free of threat. That same year, Mondrian writes a text titled “Art Shows the Evil of Nazi and Soviet Oppressive Tendencies,” which he later changes to “Liberation and Oppression in Art and Life.”
Thanks to his friend, Harry Holtzman, Mondrian quickly makes acquaintances in the New York art scene. Although he enjoys the vibrant life, clubs, and especially the music of the metropolis, he spends a great deal of time in his studio, where, inspired by the dynamics of the city, he tries out new possibilities of expression for his painting. Mondrian’s studio becomes a social meeting place, not only for emigrated artists.
1943
Piet Mondrian in his studio
Photo: Fritz Glarner, early 1943 353 East 56th Street in New York, RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History
The formal language of their works is similar, and Mondrian and Moss respect and influence each other. Conceptually, however, there is a fundamental difference between the two artists: Mondrian paints intuitively; his strict formal language of lines and planes is based on the search for perfect balance. In contrast, Moss’s works are based on mathematical formulas, which is why the use of a ruler is important in the work. When Moss presents this theory in a letter to Mondrian, the latter dryly replies: “Numbers mean nothing to me.”
In 1930, two years before Mondrian begins using the double line, Moss had already tested it in abstract compositions. In a letter, he asks Moss to explain the use of the double line, which until then was extremely unorthodox within the strict formal language of Neoplasticism. Moss’s explanation has survived as follows:
„First: single lines split up the canvas so that the composition falls apart into separate planes [...].
Second: single lines make the composition static.
Third: the double line or a multiplicity of lines renders ‘a continuity of related and inter-related rhythm in space’ possible, which makes the composition dynamic instead of static.”
Mondrian admits in a letter to his artist friend Jean Gorin that he did not understand the theory. Nevertheless, he would later use the parallel lines himself, without referring to Marlow Moss’s authorship.
After Mondrian arrives in New York, his friend Harry Holtzman takes him to the Café Society.
The legendary jazz club has two locations in New York. One opens in Greenwich Village in 1938, and the second club is just around the corner from Mondrian’s studio. Café Society is a meeting place for music lovers, but also for left-wing intellectuals and artists. Mondrian goes there to listen to the latest boogie-woogie music.
ca. March 1947
William P. Gottlieb, Portrait of Gene Sedric, Cliff Jackson, Olivette Miller and Josh White, Café Society (Downtown), New York, N.Y.
Café Society Downtown is one of the rare places that defies segregation. There, Black and white patrons spend time together, sitting side by side and listening to both Black and white performers. Famous musicians, such as singer Billie Holiday, the boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons, and many others perform there.
