Piet Mondrian, Abstract Master.
Mondrian’s development of Neo-Plasticism became one of the key documents of abstract art.
He believed that abstraction provides a truer picture of reality than illusionistic depictions of objects in the visible world.
He restricted his palette to the three primary colors and to a grid of black vertical and horizontal lines on white background.
He offset the shapes and colors to achieve dynamic equilibrium.
Mondrian did not use a ruler to measure out his lines, He thought carefully about where to place them. Colors find their own space in the works he once said. He dedicated his life to finding syncopated rhythms, balance, and harmony in both primary color and line.
Piet Mondrian was a Dutch artist best known for his abstract paintings. Art that is abstract does not show things that are recognizable such as people, objects, or landscapes. Instead, he uses colors, shapes, and textures to achieve their effect.
In his early years, he was prolific in the study of trees, he loved their form, and he practiced the layered application of paint to give the painting its true visual presence on the canvass. He would find some professional notoriety from evening landscape painting as he began to travel and work around western Europe.
What was most interesting about Mondrian he was obsessive about the structure and how negative space had a presence on a canvas, and how lines and color found their meaning balanced perfectly within that space.
Mondrian loved music, especially Jazz, and how the off-kilter melody represents the dynamic pulse of modern abstract life. He would have to embrace the conflict between rhythm and order of balance in his work, which he achieved masterfully while living in New York as he neared the end of his life.
His constant quest for modernity followed him throughout his life and his body of work stands in testament to his beliefs and artistic talent. Today Piet Mondrian is the undisputed champion of Neo-Plasticism and leaves us with an amazing legacy of abstract art in its truest life form.
