Piet Mondrian | Neo-Plasticist painter

Piet Mondrian is a Dutch painter who has carved a unique niche for himself on the global platform matching the likes of other celebrity painters.

He is possibly best known for being one of the founders of the De Stijl, which incorporated an art movement that worked around abstract works, and the new art forms that were being introduced to the world in the early 20th century.

The movement was also based on the reductive theory; which took a larger scale image, and brought it to life on the canvas, in architectural works, and in sculpture forms, and in the form of graphic arts as well.

Piet Mondrian was born in the Netherlands, and received his formal training there; he attended the Rijksadame van Beeldende in Amsterdam.

Mondrian was born 24 years after Van Gogh, but the art was the same as it had been when Van Gogh went away into the marshes to paint. Mondrian took an interest in impressionist techniques and this form of art with the early works that he did.

Like Van Gogh, Mondrian use pure, glowing colors and expressive brushwork under the influence of Pointillism and Fauvism.

The still life images, the landscape design work, and other scenes which he depicted in his early career, all depicted this style.

The first decade of the 20th century, Piet Mondrian began to make a transition in the works that he would create.

The work moved towards a pointillist and cubist style of art, as well as other abstract mediums that he engaged in during this early stage of his career. In 1912, he made the move to Paris, to gain further knowledge of the avante grand style of work.

This move took place after he saw exhibits which featured works from Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and was interested in the styles they followed, and the extreme intricacy of the work which they had created during the courses of their career.

Due to the fact that he was visiting his home in the Netherlands when World War I began, Piet Mondrian was not able to return to Paris for a short period of time, and had to remain at home, where he again developed a new style of work, and took on a different approach to the works which he created during this time in his life.

During this period, when he was at home and in Holland, he decided to work on an abstract art form and developed a neoplastic style.

The work which he produced during this period was depicted by lighter colors, simplified color selection, and forms that were balanced in their compositions.

He also developed work which delved in to the spiritual realm, and created more of a connection with religion, and his faith, as opposed to the prior works which were not focused on this point.

Once the war had come to a close, Piet Mondrian decided to return to Paris; upon his arrival, he began to work with Theo van Doesburg, as well as other famous artists in the area, and this is when they developed the De Stijl movement which was quite famous, and is possibly what Piet Mondrian is most well known for during the course of his extensive career.

The group was formed in 1917, and it extended the aesthetic principles to architecture, sculpture, canvas, and graphic art design which Piet Mondrian followed.

Upon a disagreement with van Doesburg, about the use of diagonal lines in painting and art work, Piet Mondrian decided to leave the group, and to start to work on new movements, and new forms of art he had not really entered in to in the past.

In 1931, he jointed the Abstraction- Creation line, which was more open to new styles, to new techniques, and to a difference in styles of work, which the artists would create.

When World War II began, Piet Mondrian decided to make the move over to London, and he eventually wound up in the US, living in New York.

In 1942 he held his first solo exhibit; this was only a few years prior to his death in 1944.

The work was presented in a large gallery in NYC, and was accepted by visitors as well as his piers in the art world.

In addition to being a celebrated artist, and founder of different art groups and reforms, Piet Mondrian also wrote a number of pieces during his career.

He had many of these pieces published. His writings dealt with neoplasticism and how the art form had changed, and with abstract work in general.

He published a number of theoretical texts during the course of his life, and they were published in various magazines and other art articles, during the course of his career.

Piet Mondrian not only is a leader in progressive styles and change in form, but he is also well known around the world due to the fact that his art work is published around the world, and that so many of his famous pieces are housed in different parts of the world.

He has work in several galleries in New York, including the first open one person exhibit that he did, just a few years prior to his death.

In addition to work published in New York, there are also pieces that sit in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC.

Outside of the US, he also has work that is on display in Paris, in Switzerland, in Amsterdam, and in many other museums and exhibits which are located around the world.

"To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual"

- Piet Mondrian

Due to his appeal with the different forms, and his ability to create work that touched so many, Piet Mondrian is one of the well known artists who began his work early in the 20th century.

Although he was born outside of the US, he did eventually make his way to the Western World, and was able to become quite famous in his own right, for the quality and styles that he took on with his work.

He is not only known as a famous abstract painter in the US, but also in his home town in Amsterdam, and in Paris where he made a brief stay, to learn about the different forms and artists he was interested in.

The Paris Studio of Mondrian that he established for creating some of the best artistic gems has been made iconic, which serves as an inspiration to the modern painters.

More specifically, the wall works that Mondrian brought to the fore can never be ignored for sure.

Tate Gallery in London houses one of the best works created by Mondrian every by experimenting with the latest color combinations.

Perhaps, this has proved to be major asset of his in later part of his life.

Precisely, one of his paintings titled Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red mesmerizes art lovers still because of the unique freshness it has got.

In fact, there are such countless observations of Piet Mondrian that are known to make a huge impact upon the emerging painters easily.

Le sue migliori e più citate espressioni su questa sua teoria si trovano in una lettera che scrisse a Hans-Peter Bremmer nel 1914:

"Costruisco combinazioni di linee e di colori su una superficie piatta, in modo di esprimere una bellezza generale con una somma coscienza. La Natura, o ciò che ne vedo, mi ispira, mi mette, come ogni altro pittore, in uno stato emozionale che mi provoca un'urgenza di fare qualcosa, ma voglio arrivare più vicino possibile alla verità e astrarre ogni cosa da essa, fino a che non raggiungo le fondamenta (anche se solo le fondamenta esteriori!) delle cose...

Credo sia possibile che, attraverso linee orizzontali e verticali costruite con coscienza, ma non con calcolo, guidate da un'alta intuizione, e portate all'armonia e al ritmo, queste forme basilari di bellezza, aiutate se necessario da altre linee o curve, possano divenire un'opera d'arte, così forte quanto vera".

Piet Mondrian [1872-1944], vero nome Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, è stato un pittore olandese, importante esponente del movimento artistico De Stijl, fondato da Theo van Doesburg. Cominciò la sua carriera come insegnante, ma in questo periodo stesso praticava anche l'arte della pittura.

La maggior parte dei suoi lavori in questo periodo è naturalista o impressionista, e consiste principalmente in paesaggi.

Queste immagini pastorali della sua natia Olanda descrivono mulini, campi e fiumi, inizialmente nella maniera impressionista olandese della scuola de L'Aia, successivamente con l'utilizzo di una varietà di stili e tecniche che documentano la sua ricerca per una espressione personale.

Questi suoi dipinti sono ancora in modo più definito (rispetto ai successivi) rappresentativi, e ci illustrano l'influenza che svariati movimenti artistici, tra cui il Puntinismo e i vividi colori del fauvismo, ebbero su Mondrian.

I primi dipinti a mostrarci un accenno dell'astrazione che verrà sono una serie di tele datate tra il 1905-1908, che rappresentano scene buie di alberi confusi e case che si riflettono in specchi d'acqua immobile che ce li fanno apparire quasi come macchie d'inchiostro nei test di Rorschach.

Ad ogni modo, nonostante il risultato finale porti lo spettatore ad enfatizzare le forme più che il contenuto, questi quadri sono ancora fermamente radicati alla natura, ed è solamente la conoscenza degli sviluppi successivi dei lavori di Mondrian che ci porta a ricercare le origini dei suoi lavori futuri in queste opere.

L'arte di Mondrian fu sempre intimamente legata ai suoi studi spirituali e filosofici. Nel 1908, cominciò ad interessarsi al movimento teosofico iniziato da Helena Petrovna Blavatsky nella seconda metà del XIX secolo.

La Blavatsky riteneva fosse possibile raggiungere una più profonda conoscenza della natura che quella resa disponibile dai mezzi empirici: molto del lavoro di Mondrian per il resto della sua vita venne ispirato da questa sua ricerca della conoscenza spirituale.

Mondrian rimase molto colpito da una mostra di opere cubiste ad Amsterdam nel 1911 che modificò profondamente il suo lavoro a venire. La sua ricerca della semplificazione è visibile nelle due versioni di "stilleven met gemberpot" - "natura morta con giara".

La versione dell'11 è cubista, mentre quella del '12 si riduce a una forma rotonda con triangoli e rettangoli. Mondrian pubblicò "De Nieuwe Beelding in de Schilderkunst" - "Il nuovo Plasticismo nella Pittura" in 11 uscite-capitoli sulla rivista De Stijl, tra il 1917-1918. Fu, questo, il suo primo e maggiore tentativo per esprimere la sua teoria artistica in prosa, e non sulla tela.

De Stijl, che in olandese significa Lo stile, anche conosciuto con il nome di Neoplasticismo, in olandese: Nieuwe Beeldende, è un movimento artistico fondato in Olanda nel 1917.

Il termine Neo-plasticismo è comparso per la prima volta nell'ottobre del 1917 con la pubblicazione del primo numero della rivista De Stijl fondata da Theo Van Doesburg. Questo termine è stato utilizzato da Piet Mondrian e Theo van Doesburg nella pubblicazione del Manifesto De Stijl per descrivere la loro forma d'arte: astratta, essenziale e geometrica.
Nel 1916 Theo van Doesburg pubblica sulla rivista De Beweging -Il Movimento, una serie di articoli, che saranno in seguito raccolti in volume, con il titolo De Nieuwe in de Schilder-kunst -in italiano: Il nuovo nell'arte della pittura, dove cerca di dimostrare l'evoluzione della pittura dalle forme della natura degli artisti del passato alle forme d'emozione di quelli del presente.

Dall'ottobre del 1917 allo stesso mese del 1918 Piet Mondrian pubblica sulla rivista De Stijl 11 articoli sul De Nieuwe Beelding in de schilderkunst -Il nuovo movimento nell'arte della pittura- in cui espone la sua teoria sulla pittura.

Quella del neoplasticismo è una pittura, nell'ambito dell'astrattismo geometrico, che in un certo senso assomiglia ad una operazione matematica. Tutto si basa sugli elementari della linea, del piano e dei colori primari.

Theo Van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian e l'architetto Gerrit Rietveld che furono tra i firmatari del primo manifesto 1918 in otto punti della rivista De Stijl: in esso si ricercava un nuovo equilibrio tra individuale ed universale e la liberazione dell'arte sia dai vincoli imposti dalla tradizione che dal culto della personalità.

Questa aspirazione universale ed utopistica era sintetizzata nell'aforisma: L'obiettivo della natura è l'uomo, l'obiettivo dell'uomo è lo stile