Piet Mondrian: 1872-1944

by Angelica Zander Rudenstine, Joop Joosten, Hans Janssen (Photographer)

Although Mondrian is generally recognized for his powerful influence on twentieth-century art, architecture and design, his achievement as a painter has been underestimated. This comprehensive monograph traces Mondrian's career, from his early Dutch landscapes at the turn of the century to the dazzlingly rhythmic compositions he painted in New York at the end of his life. In this volume, his identity as a modern artist is addressed in detail. While the continuity within his entire evolution is fully explored, particular attention is paid to moments of dramatic change: his discovery of modernism and later of cubism; his struggle toward abstraction; his invention of the "neoplastic" style for which he is best known; and his dynamic development of that style from the 1930s until the end of his career. An emphasis on Mondrian's pictorial development also involves an emphasis on his working process. While this volume stresses the modernity of Mondrian's work, it demonstrates, especially in its presentation of his unfinished works, that Mondrian's abstract art was far from mathematical, either in its origins or in its expression; rather, it was the product of a highly intuitive mind and hand, gradually working toward carefully modulated but far from measurable compositional solutions. In the present volume, the texture and autograph surface of each work are taken into account, and Mondrian's original framing decisions have been recorded and reproduced, often for the first time. Yve-Alain Bois's major essay on the artist's career focuses especially on the invention and development of Mondrian's neoplastic style. In examining the parallel evolution of the artist's theory and his art, Boissupports the painter's own rejection of any interpretation of his abstract work as either geometric or symbolic, and demonstrates that far from constituting a formal exercise, neoplasticism offered an entirely new articulation of painting and thought. Bois pays particular attention to

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

400 pages, Hardcover

First published May 8, 1995

Reviews

[Erika Mulvenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great look at Mondrian's work chronologically. Flipping through the pages it's easy to see how the artist progresses from realism to abstraction, and to understand how he arrived at the famous square and line paintings that made him famous.

[Kari · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is thorough documentation of the actions of Mondrian, his artworks, and some of his inspirations. It could be a good reference for someone learning about the facts of his life and career or the structure of his pieces, but the user will need to look elsewhere for information about his impact on the art world.

[Jaimie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was turned onto Mondrian by Yves Saint Laurent's re-interpretationof his paintings as a dress, but I have no idea that Mondrian's body of work was so large! Quite literally hundreds nad hundreds (not even including those lost during WWII) of graphic artworks focusing on the arrangement of lines and colour blocks. Many of these works look very similar, but it is extremely difficult to actually wualify any specific pieces as "better" as they are all so oddly unique. What intrigues me most is that none yet have discovered the formulas that Mondrian worked from to arrive at these carefully balanced proportions, which really speaks to his deep understanding of proportion from an intrinsic and organic standpoint.