Piet Mondrian - posters, prints and serigraphs



" Everything was spotless white, like a laboratory. In a light smock, with his clean-shaven face, taciturn, wearing his heavy glasses, Mondrian seemed more a scientist or priest than an artist. The only relief to all the white were large matboards, rectangles in yellow, red and blue, hung in asymmetric arrangements on all the walls. Peering at me through his glasses, Piet Mondrian noticed my glance and said: "I've arranged these to make it more cheerful." "Thus Charmion von Wiegand on Mondrian's New York studio. In his Paris studio he had used flowers to make it more cheerful. One tulip in a vase, an artificial one, its leaves painted white. "As Mondrian was probably incapable of irony, the tulip was unlikely to be a wry joke about his having had to produce flowerpieces between 1922 and 1925 when he no longer wanted to because there were no buyers for his abstracts. It could, of course, have been a revenge for the agony a compromise of that sort must have cost him. More likely, it was simply a part of the general revulsion against green and growth which made him, when seated at a table beside a window through which trees were visible to him, persuade someone to change places. "The artificial tulip fitted in, of course, with the legend of the studio as laboratory or cell, the artist as scientist or anchorite. Mondrian felt it mattered that an artist should present himself in a manner appropriate to his artistic aims. A photograph of him taken in 1908 shows a bearded floppy-haired Victorian man of sensibility. A photograph of 1911 shows a twentieth-century technologist, cleanshaven with centre parting and brilliantined hair; the spectacles were an inevitable accessory. Soft and hairy becomes hard and smooth; one of the great landscape-painters of his generation, one of the great flower-painters of his generation, comes to find trees monstrous, green fields intolerable. "The loneliness of the artificial tulip with its painted leaves might seem to suggest that flora were admitted grudgingly, one plant being the next best thing to none. But it probably meant the opposite of that - was probably a sign, not of Mondrian's having become a different person, but of his having remained the same. When Mondrian had painted flowers, he almost invariably painted one chrysanthemum, one amaryllis, one tiger lily. His most personal paintings of trees are paintings of one tree; of architecture, are paintings of a lighthouse or a single windmill or an isolated church - a solitary tower, often with its entrances as if blocked, like a fortress, refusing disruption of its monolithic intactness, its immaculate otherness, its self-sufficient singularity. "Likewise the early romantic landscapes are rarely at all panoramic: they usually take in something like a couple of cows and a tree, three or four trees in a row, a group of farmhouses. And the tendency to concentrate attention inwards persists into the paintings and drawings of the sea Of 1914-15: half of them are of a Pier and Ocean. The ocean is not oceanic, consuming, illimitable: it radiates from a vertical motif representing a man-made projection - like the towers jutting into the sky. Only the composition is no longer centripetal. The pluses and minuses of the sea don't converge upon the pier: they do radiate outwards, are then checked by the containing oval within the rectangle of the page or canvas. These works are, of course, among the key transitional pieces between figuration and non-figuration in Mondrian. In the tensions they exhibit between centripetal and centrifugal, they are also representative of his transition from centripetal to centrifugal design. In Mondrian figuration is equated with the centripetal, nonfiguration with the centrifugal. (It is interesting that an artist so exceptionally given to symmetry in his early days should so rigorously exclude it in his maturity.) "Focusing inwards is rejected by Mondrian when the object is rejected. Focusing inwards is involvement. Involvement with objects entails suffering. In the paintings of chrysanthemums - that most centripetal of flowers - there is a sense of concentration that is agonising. It is as if the artist were trying to hypnotise himself by gazing into this flower and as if he were trying to hypnotise the flower into suspending its process of growth, the process that will make the petals fall away, the flowers wilt and die (as it is seen to do in two of the paintings in the series). The rapt quality of the image seems to embody a longing to deny time, the flower is held together with a sort of desperation. In the series of images of trees that followed, the forces of growth can no longer be held in. Growth is seen as an irresistible force moving through the tree - a river of life, spreading, demanding space into which it can expand. Pictures such as The Red Tree reflect not simply a tree seen now, but the way it has evolved, has lived, has been formed, is still in formation, will wither and die. In pictures such as The Blue Tree the urgency of the need to grow is such that it is as if the whole growth were telescoped into one explosive moment like a shellburst. Coursing with life, the trees are twisted images of torment and despair. "Intense involvement with living things is involvement with death. If you follow nature, wrote Mondrian in 1920, you have to accept 'whatever is capricious and twisted in nature'. If the capricious is beautiful, it is also tragic: 'If you follow nature you will not be able to vanquish the tragic to any real degree in your art. It is certainly true that naturalistic painting makes us feel a harmony which is beyond the tragic, but it does not express this in a clear and definite way, since it is not confined to expressing relations of equilibrium. Let us recognise the fact once and for all: the natural appearance, natural form, natural colour, natural rhythm, natural relations most often express the tragic . . . We must free ourselves from our attachment to the external, for only then do we transcend the tragic, and are enabled consciously to contemplate the repose which is within all things.' "Mondrian could find a repose to contemplate in natural things so long as he could see them with their energy held in check, as with the chrysanthemums. The object was tolerated so long as it seemed to contain its energy. Looking at the trees, he recognised the forces flowing out of them - so that the tendency towards the centrifugal first appears among these images - felt the need to release those forces from objects and objectify them in another way. Attachment had to be transferred from natural objects to things not subject to death. To an artificial tulip, which would be everlasting. To lines which were not lines tracing the growth in space of a tree but were lines not matched in nature, lines proper to art, lines echoing the bounding lines of the canvas itself. "The lines which had followed the lines of the boughs and branches and twigs of the trees gave way in 1912 to lines derived from the scaffolding in space of Analytical Cubism. Geometric abstraction by and large has its origin in the flat shapes of Synthetic Cubism, a mode completely foreign to Mondrian. One imagines, in the first place, that he must have disapproved of the fact that Picasso and Braque, having evolved with exquisite logic for four years from the Estaque and Horta landscapes to the shattered luminosity of the hermetic period, suddenly took a capricious sideways leap into the arbitrary improvisations of papier colle. It is known that he disapproved of the fact that, having attained a sublime level of abstraction from nature, they used papier colle to let reality - in all its banality and all its subjection to time - in through the back door - a recourse to nostalgia and materialism. It is evident that he could accept no form of assemblage as a solution. The assembled shapes of Synthetic Cubism ultimately derived from the flat separate shapes of Gauguin. Mondrian's allegiance belonged to Impressionism and Seurat, to their concern with translating a sensation into a mesh of brushmarks. Mondrian's neo-Impressionist brushmarks of 1908-10 were elongated into the short lines of the seascapes and facades of 1914-15 which in turn were elongated into lines extending from side to side of the canvas and seemingly beyond. "A painting by Malevich or Van Doesburg or Kupka is an assemblage of shapes. A Mondrian does not consist of blue rectangles and red rectangles and yellow rectangles and white rectangles. It is conceived - as is abundantly clear from the unfinished canvases - in terms of lines - lines that can move with the force of a thunderclap or the delicacy of a cat. "Mondrian wanted the infinite, and shape is finite. A straight line is infinitely extendable, and the open-ended space between two parallel straight lines is infinitely extendable. A Mondrian abstract is the most compact imaginable pictorial harmony, the most self-sufficient of painted surfaces (besides being as intimate as a Dutch interior). At the same time it stretches far beyond its borders so that it seems a fragment of a larger cosmos or so that, getting a kind of feedback from the space which it rules beyond its boundaries, it acquires a second, illusory, scale by which the distances between points on the canvas seem measurable in miles. " 'The positive and the negative are the causes of all action ... The positive and the negative break up oneness, they are the cause of all unhappiness. The union of the positive and the negative is happiness.' The palpable oneness of the solitary flower or tower, being subject to time and change, had to give way to the subliminal oneness of a vivid equilibrium." - From David Sylvester, "About Modern Art: Critical Essays, 1948-1997" Books on Mondrian: Mondrian, by Jose Maria Faerna. From Abradale's Great Modern Masters Series, hardback, and a very economical introduction to Mondrian's life and work. Mondrian: On the Humanity of Abstract Painting, by Meyer Schapiro. Shapiro responds to critics who find Mondrian's work cold and overly analytical. Natural Reality and Abstract Reality: An Essay in Trialogue Form/1919-1920, by Piet Mondrian. Mondrian was quite literate in explaining his artistic theories, as you will find in this volume. The New Art--The New Life: The Collected Writings of Piet Mondrian, edited by Harry Holtzman. The title says it all. Piet Mondrian: Catalogue Raisonne, by Joop M. Joosten. The definitive resource for Mondrian's work. In the year 1872, Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan was born at the Kortegracht in Amersfoort. The man who was later called Piet Mondrian, is best known for his stark modern compositions featuring black lines and blocks of primary colors. However, this Dutch painter actually began his artistic career as a landscape artist. The move Mondrian made away from realistic ideals towards Cubist beliefs placed him among the most highly influential artists of all time. In the beginning ... Mondrian painted the fields, farms and canals around Amsterdam and his works at this time reveal a great love of trees and nature. This can be seen in the 1910 watercolor painting "Amaryllis," in which delicately painted flowers are beautifully arranged on the paper. Another painting, "Avond; Red Tree" of 1908 is a realistically executed tree - correct in all senses of the word. Mondrian then began to move toward a more linear style, seen in the 1911 painting "Gray Tree." Here, the form of a tree is evident, but the viewer is required to work just a little harder in order to see the branches through the many planes and abstract slices of paint. In 1915, the Dutch Magazine De Stijl (born of the friendship between Mondrian and Theo Van Doesburg) was established. It was then that Mondrian could be found spending his time painting canvases where the colors were applied in patches and the horizontal and vertical lines became absolutely straight. Although these paintings were not readily accepted by the public, Mondrian did not abandon the style he termed Neo-Plasticism. He was one to always stick firmly to his beliefs and was not above saying things like, "The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel." "He no longer gives his pictures a subject title but calls them "compositions." In his writings, Mondrian calls this abstract reproduction of reality "Neo-plasticism." -Mondriaanhuis Foundation An example of Mondrian's Neo-plastic style can be seen in the 1921 painting, "Composition with Large Blue Plane, Red, Black, Yellow and Gray," in which black lines create different sections on the canvas which in turn are painted in the primary colors in their purest forms. Now it should be mentioned that in various works created by Mondrian, influences from other artists can be seen and felt. In "Mill in Sunlight," 1908 an almost pointillist technique (ala Georges Seurat or Alfred Sisley) was used. In addition, some might say that Mondrian's "Still Life with Ginger Pot" is entirely similar to the work of Paul Cezanne, further confirming the fact that Mondrian went through a number of progressions before arriving at the style of painting he is so well known for today. This is perhaps why I enjoy Mondrian's work. Even though he could have easily continued creating his realistic landscapes that were oh so pleasing to the general public, he subjected himself to ridicule and lived with very minimal means in order to paint the way he felt he should. Bottom line, he practiced what he preached - for that he is held in high esteem. Mondrian's cleverness was not fully recognized or appreciated until after his death in 1944. Now, his works are highly sought after and numerous exhibitions of his art have been held in cities worldwide. This modest man was one of the great artists of the first half of the 20th century, influencing architectural, painting and sculptural movements. Kathleen Dreier - American Theatrical Producer (and a patron of Mondrian) - expressed grand feelings when she wrote, "Holland has given the world three great painters who, through typical products of the country, have transcended all National boundaries by the vigor of their personalities. The first was Rembrandt, the second was Van Gogh. The third is Mondrian." Composition with Red, Blue, and ... by Piet Mondrian 24x32 Wall Poster Broadway Boogie Woogie by Piet Mondrian 14x11 Fine-Art Print Opposition of Lines: Red and Yellow by Piet Mondrian 24x32 Fine-Art Print Duinlandschap by Piet Mondrian 32x24 Fine-Art Print Amaryllis, 1910 by Piet Mondrian 21x34 Fine-Art Print Red Trees by Piet Mondrian 20x16 Fine-Art Print Composition B with Red by Piet Mondrian 24x32 Fine-Art Print Rose in a Tumbler, c. 1922 by Piet Mondrian 12x14 Fine-Art Print Large Chrysanthemum, c. 1908 by Piet Mondrian 13x20 Fine-Art Print Blue Chrysanthemum, c. 1922 by Piet Mondrian 14x16 Fine-Art Print Blue Rose, c. 1922 by Piet Mondrian 12x16 Fine-Art Print Piet Mondrian Composition with Color Areas Piet Mondrian Large Chrysanthemum, 1908 Piet Mondrian Opposition of Lines: Red and Yellow Piet Mondrian Untitled (Silkscreen) Piet Mondrian White Rose in a Tumbler 1908 Molen (Mill); Mill in Sunlight 1908 Avond (Evening); Red Tree 1910 Amaryllis 1911 Gray Tree 1913 Composition No. II; Composition in Line and Color 1915 Ocean 5 1918 Composition with Color Planes and Gray Lines 1 1918 Composition with Gray and Light Brown 1920 Composition A: Composition with Black, Red, Gray, Yellow, and Blue 1921 Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Gray 1921 Composition with Large Blue Plane, Red, Black, Yellow, and Gray 1921 Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue 1922 Composition with Blue, Yellow, Black, and Red 1925 Lozenge Composition with Red, Black, Blue, and Yellow 1929 Fox Trot; Lozenge Composition with Three Black Lines 1930 Composition with Yellow Patch 1930 Composition with Yellow 1935-1942 Composition No. III Blanc-Jaune c. 1935/42 Rhythm of Black Lines 1936 Composition blanc, rouge et jaune 1936 Vertical Composition with Blue and White 1939-42 Composition No. 8 1939-1942 Composition No. 10 1941-42 New York City 1942-1943 Broadway Boogie Woogie
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