The Nazis considered the work of this Dutch artist to be degenerate. He was forced to flee to London and then to New York. However, Pete Mondrian managed to conquer the whole world with his famous geometric abstract paintings and influence the further development of art.
Short biography of Pete Mondrian
One of the founders of abstract art, artist Pete Mondrian, was born on March 7, 1872 in the city of Amersfoort, Utrecht province in the Netherlands (Amersfoort, Netherlands). Today Mondrian is considered the most famous native of this small town.
Full name is Peter Cornelius Mondrian. The boy showed early love for drawing, and the father supported his son's hobby. At an early stage, he and his uncle, the landscape painter Fritz Mondrian, were engaged in the art education of the child.
At the age of 20, Peter began his studies at the Academy of Arts in Amsterdam (1892-1897). In addition to the capital of the Netherlands, important stages of his life and work are associated twice with Paris: 1911-1914 and 1919-1938, and then London: 1938-1940. The last years were spent in New York: 1940-1944.
In the first period of his work, Mondrian painted landscapes, depicting the nature of the Netherlands in his canvases. At the same time, he tirelessly searched for something new, dreamed of something else - progressive art for the modern world, and constantly experimented. At various times of his formation as an artist, he was influenced by impressionism, the work of Van Gogh, and Picasso's cubism. Mondrian was fascinated by the theosophical teachings of Helena Blavatsky. Gradually, his paintings became peculiar in line, color, rhythm. He stubbornly went his own way in art and, in the end, forever departed from naturalistic, plot and figurative painting.
As a result, Pete Mondrian developed his own abstract geometric style - neoplasticism. He filled the space of the canvas with compositions consisting of flat cells of different sizes, obtained by intersecting straight horizontal and vertical lines at right angles. He painted the area of the planes formed by the lines with only three primary colors of the spectrum - yellow, red, blue.
In 1917-1932. a group of painters and architects united in the "De Stijl" - "Style" community. One of its founders is Piet Mondrian. In the journal of the same name, Mondrian expounded his views on art and substantiated the theory of neoplasticism.
In 1938, the Nazis came to power. Mondrian fled from Paris to London because his art was deemed degenerate by them. In 1940 he moved even further - to New York. There, in 1942, his personal exhibition took place, the only one during his lifetime.
He was impressed by the vibrant metropolis with its hectic life, jazz and boogie-woogie dance. This passion manifested itself in his works. In 1943 he painted Broadway Boogie Woogie. The arrangement of lines and small cells on the canvas resembles the street plan of the New York district of Manhattan.
The artist did not complete his last masterpiece, The Victory of Boogie-Woogie. On February 1, 1944, he died of pneumonia.
Pete Mondrean's personal life was spent outside the family. He had no children or a wife.
The work of Piet Mondrian, the Moscow metro, the programming language named after him and other interesting stories
The style developed by Mondrian influenced the development of fine art in general and the work of many artists. Such trends as op art and minimalism have their origins in neoplasticism. Mondrian's achievements are reflected in architecture, advertising and printing, interior decoration, furniture design, fashion and even utilitarian items.
In the 1930s, the designer of the Parisian fashion house Hermes, Lola Prusak, presented a line of leather suitcases and bags decorated with square blocks of “Mondrian” colors: red, blue and yellow.
In September 1965, the famous French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent created the Mondrian collection of knitted mini dresses with a trapeze silhouette in fabric with prints from fragments of the artist's paintings. The project has been featured in French Vogue and many other fashion magazines. Dress models immediately gained popularity and were produced in mass circulation in cheap copies.
The art of the artist, which is quite unexpected, turned out to be not alien to computer scientists. David Morgan-Mar came up with a programming language whose code looks like an abstract drawing, similar to the "grids" of Pete Mondrian's paintings. The programmer named this language by the name of the artist - Piet.
Unpleasant stories happened with the works of Mondrian. On January 9, 2012, his 1905 work "The Windmill" was stolen from the National Art Gallery of Athens.
Piet Mondrian's brushes belong to one of the 100 most expensive paintings in the world, sold at Christie's auction - “Composition No. III. Red, Blue, Yellow and Black”, created in 1929. It sold in 2015 for $ 50.565 million.
There is an interesting example of the application of Mondrian's motives in our capital. In January 2016, the Rumyantsevo station was opened in New Moscow on the red line of the metro, in the interiors of which stained-glass windows with elements of abstract paintings by Mondrian were used.
Gallery of some of Piet Mondrian's works
"Blooming apple tree"
