Mondrian

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) was a Dutch painter and theoretician who played a key role in the development of abstract art and the De Stijl movement, also known as Neoplasticism. Born in Amersfoort, Mondrian began his career with naturalistic landscapes and studies of form, before moving toward abstraction after a period of study in Paris and contact with Cubist artists.

In 1917 he helped found De Stijl, a movement advocating simplified composition using straight lines, right angles, and the primacy of vertical and horizontal elements. Mondrian’s mature vocabulary consisted of white ground, black grid lines, and blocks of primary colors, sometimes plus gray, with an aim to express universal beauty and order.

Key works from the 1920s and 1930s include Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow (1930), and Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue (c. 1930). After relocating to the United States in the 1940s, he produced more dynamic works such as Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942–43) and Victory Boogie-Woogie (1944), which softened earlier strictness with rhythmic grid variations. Mondrian died in New York City in 1944, leaving a lasting influence on modern art, design, and architecture.

His legacy lies in the idea that painting could express universal values through abstract, geometric means, a principle that informed later movements in graphic design, architecture, and minimalist aesthetics, and that continued to provoke discussion about the balance between order and spontaneity in art.