How are you?
On every Thursday,
I am introducing the stories about various artists and their paintings with the
title “Interesting
Art Stories”.
The 39th story for
this week is “Composition
II with Red Blue and Yellow” by Piet Mondrian.
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| Piet Mondrian |
“Composition II with Red Blue and Yellow” is Piet Mondrian's 1930 painting, which greatly contributed to expressing the visual language of abstract concepts despite the use of a relatively small canvas. The thick and black lines representing the borders of various geometric figures are one of the important elements defining the characteristics of the work. This work is a product of the Dutch De Stijl movement, and Mondrian is one of its leading artists.
Born in the Netherlands in 1872, Mondrian is known to have always had an interest in art. His uncle Fritz Mondrian, who was a professional painter, helped him move to Amsterdam, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts under the master August Allebé for three years, and he transformed his interests from a simple hobby to an artist's passion.
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| Fritz Mondrian |
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| Portrait of Johannes Luden, August Allebé (1868) |
Moving to Paris in 1910, he began to discover his potential, where he was introduced to Cubism, a major influence to his work. He said “of all the abstraction artists, I felt only the Cubists had found the right path", showing a favor on Cubism, but he still found this style too realistic and began to immerse himself in more abstract concepts.
Then, Mondrian, who visited the Netherlands, was scheduled to stay there for a while, but due to the outbreak of World War 1, he stayed an extended period of five years. Faced with an unexpected situation, he met many important figures in the art field in the Netherlands during this time, which gave birth to De Stijl.
In particular, an encounter with fellow Dutch artist Bart van der Leck provided the basis for Mondrian to exchange ideas in this field. Mondrian got from van der Leck the concept of painting flat areas of pure color, a solution to his coloring problem, and van der Leck adopted Mondrian's concept of crossed vertical and horizontal lines as a basis for composition.
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| Metz & Co. showroom with wall hangings (left and rear walls), Bart van der Leck |
Shortly after the formation of this Mondrian and van der Leck's partnership, Theo van Doesburg, a painter who frequently wrote about art for many periodicals and who is considered the propagandist of the De Stijl movement, contacted them. He invited Mondrian and van der Leck to join his initiative to launch an artistic review periodical, resulting in the journal entitled “De Stijl.”
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| Neo-Plasticism: Composition VII, Theo van Doesburg (1917) |
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| De Stijl, Vol.1, no.1, Delft (Oct. 1917) |
They involved not only painters but also architects in the movement, but the movement was confined to the Netherlands due to the war. However, the direction of pursuit of the artists involved in this movement was not the same, for example, not all De Stijl artists produced works that mimicked Mondrian. They were individual artists and architects who applied similar but distinct techniques to their work to achieve similar theoretical goal, and Mondrian attempted to define the ambition of De Stijl artists in his personal artistic manifesto, “Neo-Plasticist in Painting (1917)”.
The creation of the essence of life itself
through abstraction depends on straight lines and primary colors what Mondrian
refers to as the universal means of expression, and this essence of life can be
illustrated by transcending the particular to express the universal.
Also, Mondrian's art had a spiritual quality to it, and he practiced Theosophy rooted in mystic, oriental interpretation, and Nieuwe Beelding, a word used in the teachings of Theosophy, appears in Mondrian's work. The Nieuwe Beelding is translated as Neo-Plasticism, a term used to describe his art in Mondrian's personal essays.
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| The logo for the Theosophical Society |
Mondrian conducted various De Stijl practices in this work, but he did not consider it a success, and Mondrian, who continued to develop and refine his work, found some satisfaction with his final works before his death.
Although De Stijl was a movement confined
to Dutch region, many people credit the movement, and in particular Mondrian,
played an important role in expressing abstract concepts and defining this term
in the art field today.
Thank you.
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