Chrysanthemum (1906-1942)

Piet Mondrian prints bring the bold black grids and pure primary colours of one of the great pioneers of abstract art into your home, alongside the quiet Dutch landscapes where his journey began. Mondrian co-founded the De Stijl movement and reduced painting to lines, rectangles and red, yellow and blue. Our collection of fine art prints covers his abstract compositions, early farms, mills and dunes, and flower studies.

About Piet Mondrian

Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan was born in Amersfoort in the Netherlands on 7 March 1872. His father was a qualified drawing teacher, and he often painted with his uncle Frits Mondriaan, a pupil of the Hague School painter Willem Maris. His early work, painted around Amsterdam and Winterswijk, shows farms, windmills, rivers and trees in the Dutch landscape tradition.

In 1912 he moved to Paris and dropped an "a" from his name. The Cubism of Picasso and Braque transformed his work almost immediately. During the First World War he stayed in the Netherlands, where at the Laren artists' colony he met Bart van der Leck and Theo van Doesburg, and with Van Doesburg founded the journal De Stijl, in which he set out his theory of Neoplasticism.

Back in Paris from 1919, he began his famous grid paintings and from the mid-1920s his tilted "lozenge" canvases. In 1938, as fascism advanced, he moved to London, and in 1940 to New York, where the city's energy and jazz inspired his last works, Broadway Boogie Woogie and the unfinished Victory Boogie Woogie. He died in New York on 1 February 1944.

Style and Subjects

Mondrian's mature paintings use only the three primary colours (red, yellow and blue), the three primary values (black, white and grey) and the two primary directions (horizontal and vertical). Thick black lines divide white grounds into rectangles, a few of them filled with bright colour, in carefully balanced, asymmetrical arrangements.

His path there was gradual. Early Dutch landscapes give way to Pointillist and Fauvist colour around 1908, then to Cubist trees and church facades, and finally to pure abstraction. His late New York works replace black lines with lively bands of colour.

Famous Works

• Lighthouse in Westkapelle (1908), Kunstmuseum Den Haag. A lighthouse in glowing, expressive colour from his transitional years.
• The Red Tree (1909), Kunstmuseum Den Haag. A gnarled tree in red against blue, on the road to abstraction.
• Gray Tree (1911), Kunstmuseum Den Haag. The tree reduced to rhythmic grey lines under Cubist influence.
• Composition 10 in Black and White (1915), Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo. A pattern of short black lines on white.
• Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow (1930), Kunsthaus Zürich. A classic grid with one large red square.
• Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue (1937), Tate, London. A mature grid in his signature primary colours.
• Place de la Concorde (1938–43). A Paris grid reworked in New York with added colour.
• Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942), Museum of Modern Art, New York. The grid of Manhattan streets as pulsing jazz rhythm.

Decorating with Mondrian Prints

Mondrian's grids are made for modern interiors. A composition in red, yellow and blue makes a bold focal point in a living room, kitchen or home office, especially with white walls and simple furniture, and a pair of grids works well in a hallway.

His early works, like The Winkel Mill or Foxtail Lily, are gentler choices for a bedroom or study, and a mix of early and late pictures tells the story of his journey to abstraction.

FAQ

What art movement was Piet Mondrian part of?

He co-founded the De Stijl movement with Theo van Doesburg and developed his own style, which he called Neoplasticism.

Why did Mondrian only use red, yellow and blue?

He believed art should express universal harmony, so he limited himself to the three primary colours, black, white and grey, and horizontal and vertical lines.

Did Mondrian always paint abstract art?

No. He began as a Dutch landscape painter of farms, mills and rivers, and moved step by step through Pointillism and Cubism to pure abstraction by about 1920.

Where can I see Mondrian's paintings?

The Kunstmuseum Den Haag has the largest collection. Others are in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate, the Kröller-Müller Museum and the Kunsthaus Zürich.

Related Artists

• Theo van Doesburg: co-founder of De Stijl with Mondrian
• Wassily Kandinsky: fellow pioneer of abstract art
• Kazimir Malevich: Russian pioneer of geometric abstraction
• Jan Toorop: leading Dutch modern painter of the generation before him