31 Facts About Piet Mondrian

Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, after 1906 known as Piet Mondrian, was a Dutch painter and art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

Piet Mondrian is known for being one of the pioneers of 20th-century abstract art, as he changed his artistic direction from figurative painting to an increasingly abstract style, until he reached a point where his artistic vocabulary was reduced to simple geometric elements.

Piet Mondrian was a contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which he co-founded with Theo van Doesburg.

Piet Mondrian evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neoplasticism.

Piet Mondrian encountered experiments in Cubism and with the intent of integrating himself within the Parisian avant-garde removed an 'a' from the Dutch spelling of his name.

Piet Mondrian was born in Amersfoort, province of Utrecht in the Netherlands, the second of his parents' children.

Piet Mondrian was descended from Christian Dirkzoon Monderyan who lived in The Hague as early as 1670.

Piet Mondrian's father was a qualified drawing teacher, and, with his uncle, Frits Mondriaan, the younger Piet often painted and drew along the river Gein.

Piet Mondrian began his career as a teacher in primary education, but he practiced painting.

Piet Mondrian's art was intimately related to his spiritual and philosophical studies.

In 1921, in a letter to Steiner, Piet Mondrian argued that his neoplasticism was "the art of the foreseeable future for all true Anthroposophists and Theosophists".

Piet Mondrian remained a committed Theosophist in subsequent years, although he believed that his own artistic current, neoplasticism, would eventually become part of a larger, ecumenical spirituality.

In 1911, Piet Mondrian moved to Paris and changed his name, dropping an "a" from "Mondriaan", to emphasize his departure from the Netherlands, and his integration within the Parisian avant-garde.

Unlike the Cubists, Piet Mondrian still attempted to reconcile his painting with his spiritual pursuits, and in 1913 he began to fuse his art and his theosophical studies into a theory that signaled his final break from representational painting.

Piet Mondrian published "De Nieuwe Beelding in de schilderkunst", in twelve installments during 1917 and 1918.

When World War I ended in 1918, Piet Mondrian returned to France, where he would remain until 1938.

Piet Mondrian began producing grid-based paintings in late 1919, and in 1920, the style for which he came to be renowned began to appear.

From 1934 to 1935, three of Piet Mondrian's paintings were exhibited as part of the "Abstract and Concrete" exhibitions in the UK at Oxford, London, and Liverpool.

In September 1938, Piet Mondrian left Paris in the face of advancing fascism and moved to London.

Piet Mondrian spent many long hours painting on his own until his hands blistered, and he sometimes cried or made himself sick.

Piet Mondrian produced Lozenge Composition With Four Yellow Lines, a simple painting that innovated thick, colored lines instead of black ones.

The newly colored areas are thick, almost bridging the gap between lines and forms, and it is startling to see color in a Piet Mondrian painting that is unbounded by black.

The new canvases that Piet Mondrian began in Manhattan are even more startling, and indicate the beginning of a new idiom that was cut short by the artist's death.

Piet Mondrian's painting Broadway Boogie-Woogie at the Museum of Modern Art was highly influential in the school of abstract geometric painting.

The research found that the painting was in very good condition and that Piet Mondrian painted the composition in one session.

At the age of 71 in the fall of 1943, Piet Mondrian moved into his second and final Manhattan studio at 15 East 59th Street, and set about to recreate the environment he had learned over the years was most congenial to his modest way of life and most stimulating to his art.

Piet Mondrian painted the high walls the same off-white he used on his easel and on the seats, tables and storage cases he designed and fashioned meticulously from discarded orange and apple-crates.

Piet Mondrian glossed the top of a white metal stool in the same brilliant primary red he applied to the cardboard sheath he made for the radio-phonograph that spilled forth his beloved jazz from well-traveled records.

Piet Mondrian was there for only a few months, as he died in February 1944.

Piet Mondrian died of pneumonia on 1 February 1944 and was interred at the Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

In October 2020, Piet Mondrian's heirs filed a lawsuit in a US court against the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Krefeld, Germany, for the return of four paintings by Piet Mondrian.