1885 — 1907

The Hague School

As a young man, Piet Mondrian is influenced by the style of the so-called Hague School, known for naturalistic landscapes in earthy colors. The rather conservative depictions are considered the epitome of Dutch landscape painting at the time.

Mondrian often paints the small river Gein near Amsterdam and is interested in the reflections in the water. In several paintings, he moves the horizon very far up, giving him plenty of space to explore the relationship between the motif, surface, and space.

The earliest painting in the exhibition depicts a woman with a spindle in front of a table. Of particular interest here is the area behind the woman, where white tiles can be seen. Some think they can already make out a design element in these tiles which, many years later, would become characteristic of Mondrian’s neoplastic works.

1908 — 1911

Dunes, the Sea, and Towers

From 1908 onwards, Mondrian repeatedly spends time at the seaside resort of Domburg on the Walcheren peninsula. The light there fascinates him. He paints the dunes, the sea, the Domburg church tower, and the lighthouse of Westkapelle. His works gradually move away from a realistic representation of nature.

Mondrian is clearly influenced by the French avant-garde movements such as (Post-)Impressionism and Fauvism. He applies the paint with visibly parallel brushstrokes, and the colors deviate from those that the object has in reality.

This can be clearly observed in the painting “Mill in Sunlight,” in which the windmill stands flaming red against a brilliant blue-yellow sky. The painting is so disconcerting to contemporaries that it causes a scandal during an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Whoever paints like this must be insane, one critic argued.

1911 — 1914

Increasing Abstraction

From 1911 onwards, Mondrian stays in Paris, where he comes into contact with Cubism, a style in which the motif is broken down into geometric forms. The most important representatives of Cubism are Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, whose works he encounters for the first time in 1911. In the Cubism of Picasso and Braque, the motifs are still partially recognizable. In contrast, Mondrian’s goal is the complete abstraction of the object.

Mondrian’s path towards abstraction can be easily comprehended using the example of three paintings of trees. “The Red Tree” from 1908/1910 is still depicted quite realistically. Only the strong colors do not correspond to nature. In “Tree” from 1912, the horizontal and vertical lines dominate, but the motif is still clearly discernible.

In “The Flowering Apple Tree” from 1912, the tree is only recognizable on closer inspection. It is no longer the branches, but rather the areas between them that gain importance. He continues along this path over the course of the following two years; the original motifs can only be surmised in rudimentary form.

1914 — 1920

De Stijl Further Reduction of Color and Form

Around 1916/1917 - parallel to the founding of the group “De Stijl” - Mondrian once again returns to a more naturalistic rendering of typical Dutch motifs for commissioned works. The windmill and the stately farm Weltevreden, which he had already painted around 1905, are staged by him at different times of the day. He is primarily interested in a visual experiment, which leads to the amazing mirror effects in the water surrounding the farm. In these works, it is no longer possible to clearly differentiate between above and below.

However, Mondrian’s main focus during these years is clearly on abstraction. In the sense of “De Stijl,” Mondrian reduces his paintings to monochrome surfaces. The lines, which soon stand at right angles to each other, develop from the spaces between these color surfaces. The line acquires increasingly greater presence in his works.

His grid-like paintings appear geometric and constructed. In fact, however, Mondrian’s work is determined by an experimental process. After painting “Composition with Gray Lines” (1918), he rotates the work by forty-five degrees; only now is the work complete for him.

1920 — 1944

The New Design

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.

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.