Piet Mondrian

Kingdom of the Netherlands·1872-1944

Piet Mondrian pioneered abstract painting in early twentieth-century Amsterdam, rejecting figurative realism in favour of pure form and colour. From traditional landscapes, he evolved toward a systematic abstraction, founding De Stijl with Theo van Doesburg in 1917. His vision of "universal beauty" relied on a disciplined vocabulary: primary colours (red, blue, yellow), neutral tones (black, white, grey), and orthogonal lines. In his Compositions, he refined this language, adjusting the balance of coloured rectangles and the weight of dividing lines. Rotating canvases forty-five degrees introduced new tensions. After moving to New York in 1940, Mondrian returned to his practice of arranging coloured paper and reintroduced primary hues into his black grids, creating works that resembled city maps and musical scores. This late experimental phase ended with his death in 1944.