Mondrian Evolution

Piet Mondrian hat die Entwicklung der Malerei von der Figuration zur Abstraktion maßgebend geprägt. Anlässlich seines 150. Geburtstags widmet sich Mondrian Evolution seinem vielgestaltigen Werk und seiner künstlerischen Entwicklung. Zunächst in der Tradition der niederländischen Landschaftsmalerei des späten 19. Jahrhunderts arbeitend, gewannen bald Symbolismus und Kubismus große Bedeutung für ihn. Erst seit Anfang der 1920er Jahre konzentrierte sich der Künstler auf eine komplett gegenstandslose Bildsprache, die sich auf die rechtwinklige Anordnung von schwarzen Linien mit Flächen in Weiß und den drei Grundfarben Blau, Rot und Gelb konzentriert. In einzelnen Kapiteln wird dieser Weg anhand von Motiven wie Windmühlen, Dünen und das Meer, sich im Wasser spiegelnden Bauernhöfen und Pflanzen in verschiedenen Formen der Abstraktion nachverfolgt.

An encyclopaedic work on color in Western art and culture from the Middle Ages to Post-Modernism.

Piet Mondrian was one of the great pioneers of abstract art. This book looks at the relationship between his paintings and his theories on art.

This volume presents Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872-1944). His earliest landscapes are rendered in an Impressionistic style but, possess the marked vertical and horizontal tendencies that foreshadow his mature paintings. Mondrian's work began to show the influences of Cubism, and in 1912, the artist moved to Paris where he continued to refine his style, continually exploring increasingly sophisticated compositions. In his paintings, Mondrian strove to achieve a universal form of expression by reducing form and color to their simplest components. The artist termed his work "Neo-Plasticism". Mondrian's most well-known works consisted of white ground, upon which was painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors.

There is no shortage of books about Le Corbusier, or Mies van der Rohe, or De Stijl. However, this book considers them in relation to each other, observing how a study of one can illuminate the works of the others. Going beyond a superficial look at the end-products of these architects, this book examines the philosophical foundations of their work, taking as its central theme the aim of universality, as opposed to the individual and the particular. Each of these three aimed at universality, but for each this concept took on a different form. The universality of De Stijl and artists like Van Doesburg and Mondrian resembled that of the universe itself: it was boundless, going beyond the limits of the canvas and seeking to abolish the wall as the boundary between interior and exterior space. In contrast, each of Le Corbusier’s creations was a self-contained universe within a clear frame, while Mies fluctuated between these two perspectives.

The name De Stijl, title of a magazine founded in the Netherlands in 1917, is now used to identify the abstract art and functional architecture of its major contributors: Mondrian, Van Doesburg, Van der Leck, Oud, Wils and Rietveld. De Stijl achieved international acclaim by the end of the 1920s and its paintings, buildings and furniture made fundamental contributions to the modern movement. This book is the first to emphasize the local context of De Stijl and explore its relationship to the distinctive character of Dutch modernism. It examines how the debates concerning abstraction in painting and spatiality in architecture were intimately connected to contemporary developments in the fields of urban planning, advertising, interior design and exhibition design. The book describes the interaction between the world of mass culture and the fine arts.