Mondrian Composition
Bente Coker
This is an early example of the geometric mode of painting that Mondrian called Neo-Plasticism. The abstract two-dimensional nature of these compositions formed a new universal aesthetic language that was popularized through the magazine De Stijl. The avant-garde movement known by the same name held the promise of constructing a postwar world with a common point of visual reference, a way of abolishing artistic and even social hierarchies. Here, Mondrian uses thick black lines to divide the canvas into eleven different rectangles, some of which are painted in primary shades of red and blue. He created lighter hues by mixing primary colors with white. Over time, Mondrian ceased diluting his palette altogether in favor of pure primary colors.
A minimalistic design, a graphic and modern image with a strong architectural component. Mondrian is a system designed to offer maximum compositional freedom. The characteristic thin metal feet support a linear structure that seems suspended. Two seat depths available and armrests in four sizes, to be enriched with wooden backrest and shelves, or with the wooden coffee table. A complete project that interprets the contemporary living space with personality.
Piet Mondrian cofounded the De Stijl movement of art and design, which is characterized by simplified compositions, primary colors, and right angles that define spatial relationships. A devoted advocate of jazz, Mondrian frequently linked his works to music through their titles. He completed this canvas in Paris just before beginning his series based on the fox-trot.
Piet Mondrian intended his abstract or so-called "neo-plastic" paintings to express his fundamentally spiritual notion that universal harmonies preside in nature. The horizontal and vertical elements of his compositions, assiduously calibrated to produce a balanced asymmetry, represented forces of opposition that parallel the dynamic equilibrium at work in the natural world. By 1921 Mondrian had distilled his compositions into black lines that intersect at right angles, defining rectangles painted only in white or gray and the three primary colors.
In 1918 the artist turned one of these square canvases 45 degrees to rest "on point," doing so without rotating the linear elements within the composition. Approximately three years later he merged that format with the elemental color scheme of his mature works to produce this monumental painting, the earliest of the neo-plastic diamond or lozenge compositions. Repainted around 1925, when the black lines were thickened, this picture relates to several other works of the 1920s, where color is restricted to the periphery. Mondrian said the diamond compositions were about cutting, and indeed the sense of cropping here is emphatic. Forms are incomplete, sliced by the edge of the canvas, thus implying a pictorial continuum that extends beyond the physical boundary of the painting.
Created by Piet Mondrian between 1919 and 1920 after he moved to Paris and with an approach to Cubist decomposition theories, the work of art constitutes the point of passage to abstractionism and belongs in particular to the first phase of the Neoplastic period.
The composition is a fantastic example of the highly distinctive De Stijl movement that Mondrian co-founded, typically characterized by the harmonious interplay of primary colors within a simple, geometrically abstracted grid.
Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) lived in a Europe shaken by the violence of World War I (1914-18). It was a time of societal reevaluation and self-exploration. In 1917 Mondrian co-founded De Stijl (The Style), a Dutch magazine filled with utopian ideals proposing the total integration of art and life. It was during these formative years that Mondrian began moving towards abstraction. Like his Russian contemporary, Wassily Kandinsky, Mondrian began with representational landscapes but slowly moved towards more abstract compositions. By 1920, Mondrian had developed Neoplasticism (pure plastic art), his famous signature style of reducing compositions to cardinal lines and primary colors.
The painting is an arrangement of black lines, white voids, and color blocks. The lines are limited to horizontal and vertical directions while the colors are limited to red, blue, and yellow. Mondrian believed that cardinal directions and primary colors were universal elements which lead to a universal beauty of balanced contrasts and dynamic tension. Art was a moral code that through severity and austerity could produce beauty and sensuality. While the composition lacks any diagonal lines and mixed colors, it is paradoxically satisfying and seductive. It triggers the mathematical pleasure senses with the same satisfaction of decluttering a filled room, organizing a prized collection, or discovering the solution to a complex problem.
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