Piet Mondrian

Piet Mondrian (7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944) was a Dutch modern artist of the De stijl group. His early paintings show abstract landscapes in post-impressionist and cubist style.

Piet Mondrian
Nationality Dutch
Field Painting
Movement De Stijl
Tableau I (Piet Mondriaan, 1921)

As his career went on, he started to paint in a more abstract style.

Mondrian painted about 250 of these geometric abstracts, from 1917 to 1944. Mondrian called his style “neoplasticism”.

Escaping in 1940 from a Europe at war, Mondrian spent the last four years of his life in New York City. His paintings of that time express exuberance at city life. In his final painting, Broadway Boogie Woogie (painted around 1942 or 1943), the checkerboard lines, previously black, are now painted blue, gray, red and yellow. The yellow was apparently inspired by New York’s Yellow cabs.

Further reading

  • Bax, Marty 2002. Complete Mondrian. Lund Humphries, London. ISBN 978-0-85331-803-3
  • Bois, Yve-Alain et al. 1995. Piet Mondrian: 1872-1944. Bulfinch Press. ISBN 978-0-8212-2164-8
  • Busignani, Alberto 1968. Mondrian: the life and work of the artist, illustrated by 80 colour plates. London: Thames and Hudson.
  • Locher, Hans 1994. Piet Modrian: colour, structure and symbolism. Verlag Gachnang & Springer, Bern, Switzerland. ISBN 978-3-906127-44-6
  • Milner, John 1992. Mondrian. London: Phaidon. ISBN 0-7148-2659-6
  • Seuphor, Michel & Harry N. Abrams 1955. Piet Mondrian, life and work.


Piet Mondrian Media