March 2016 - PIET MONDRIAN

Tableau 2, 1922
The Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA, oil on canvas

"Until 1908 Mondrian’s work was naturalistic—incorporating successive on influences of academic landscape and still-life painting, Dutch Impressionism, and Symbolism.  In 1909 and 1910 he experimented with Pointillism and by 1911 had begun to work in a Cubist mode. After seeing original Cubist works by Georges Braque and Pablo PicassoMondrian decided to move to Paris. There, from 1912 to 1914, he began to develop an independent abstract style.

During World War I he further reduced his colors and geometric shapes and formulated his nonobjective Neoplastic style. In 1917 Mondrian became one of the founders of De Stijl. This group, extended its principles of abstraction and simplification beyond painting and sculpture to architecture and graphic and industrial design. 

By the early 1920s, in line with De Stijl practice, he restricted his compositions to predominantly off-white grounds divided by black horizontal and vertical lines that often framed subsidiary blocks of individual primary colors. Tableau 2 (1922), a representative example of this period, demonstrates the artist’s rejection of mimesis, which he considered a reprehensibly deceptive imitation of reality."
 
Extract from:
https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/piet-mondrian?gclid=CPPxlaa_kM0CFUgq0wodhoIBMw
Image from: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/3013

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