Mondriaan’s special exhibition witnessed a pure aesthetic and abstraction.
De Stijl (from Dutch meaning "style") refers to an alliance of painters, architects and designers established in 1917. Dutch painter Pieete mondriaan (1872-1944) was one of the initiators of de stijl and one of the most influential painters in the first half of the 20th century. Mondriaan’s original work is a philosophy of "less is more", and he hopes that his art is extremely simple, rigorous and careful, and pure and clean.
The Paper learned that the exhibition "mondriaan and de stijl of the Netherlands" was recently held in the Museum of the Queen Sofia National Art Center in Madrid, Spain, which brought together the works of mondriaan and other artists, including paintings, sculptures and documents. It was the first large-scale exhibition of mondriaan in Spain since 1982.
Pieete mondriaan (1872-1944)
In 1918, the initiators of the de stijl Movement published their ambitious declaration in four languages: creating a cosmopolitan style and "promoting the international unity of life, art and culture." The mission of this artist alliance is to create a new artistic style with a calm and harmonious spirit. They believe that simplifying the elements of painting to only form, color and lines can bring new vitality to society. When art and life are perfectly integrated, people no longer need art.
According to mondriaan’s description, de stijl will seize."The pure creation of human spirit … it is embodied in a pure aesthetic relationship and expressed in an abstract form."
Composition C (No.3), Red, Yellow and Blue
Composition C (No.3), Red, Yellow and Blue is a typical work of mondriaan. It has a pure white background. Mondriaan believes that as the basis of constructing works, it is universal and pure. Then, he drew a sparse grid of black horizontal or vertical lines with different thicknesses. This is an important detail. Mondriaan hopes to convey the idea of eternal movement of life in his works, which he thinks can be achieved unconsciously by changing the width of black lines. He reasoned that the thinner the line is, the faster the eyes can "read" its trajectory, and vice versa. Therefore, by changing the width, he can use the line as if he were using the accelerator pedal of a car, which will help to successfully achieve his ultimate goal: to make the painting "dynamically balanced".
"mondriaan and de stijl" exhibition site
Balance, tension and equality are all the creative contents of mondriaan. He once said: "Neo-Sculpture stands for equality, because … although there are differences between the parts, it can make each part have the same value as other parts." This is an enlightening comment, which highlights the differences between mondriaan’s Neo-Modelism and the abstract art of Kandinsky, Malevic and Tatlin. In mondriaan’s mature artistic career, individual elements are never mixed, and they are always self-sufficient. There are no overlapping planes or excessive tones. This is because mondriaan is concerned about the unity of various elements, and has no time to take care of the romantic ideal of love which combines the two in the traditional sense. He is defining a new social order.
In 1872, mondriaan was born in Amesford, central Netherlands. His father was a puritan and a primary school principal who was keen on art. Art and religion planted seeds at the beginning of his life. In 1911, he saw the early works of Pablo Picasso and georges braque, the founders of cubism. Cubism ignored the true description of natural images, and emphasized that the physical composition of the picture was very suitable for revealing the inner essence of nature.
A few years later, mondriaan also launched a modern art movement, and Neo-Sculpture was the purest abstract art form at that time. Four paintings with the theme of a tree constitute an excellent series, which shows mondriaan’s transformation from a follower of an early master to a pioneering modernist artist.
Night, Mangrove (1908)
The first one is "Night, Mangrove" (1908), in which the painter depicts an old tree in the dead of winter. This painting confirms the influence of Dutch romantic landscape painters in the 17th century on mondriaan at that time. The expressive colors of the work-crimson, blue and black-show that the artist also draws nourishment from Van Gogh.
The Grey Tree (1912)
The Grey Tree (1912) is the second in this series. Mondriaan’s abstract power has awakened, and we can see the influence of cubism on him. Mondriaan tried to show the combined structure in a painting whose spatial depth was almost completely eliminated, so the details of the tree were simplified.
The Flowering Apple Tree (1912)
Then came The Flowering Apple Tree (1912), which showed that mondriaan was going further and further on the abstract road. Mondriaan represented the branches as a series of short, thick black lines, which were gracefully bent, some of which crossed into oval combinations and floated horizontally on the whole canvas. He added some black vertical lines to fix the picture and give it structure.
In 1913, Picture 2/ Composition 7 was born. The theme of this painting is still a tree, but it is much more abstract than any cubist’s treatment of the same theme. Mondriaan breaks down his painting objects into tiny broken planes. The color is still mild, except for the bright yellow, which struggles to break away from the whole pattern. This may imply the inner spirituality that he intends to depict in his paintings.
Mondrian
Mondriaan’s career continued to advance. At this time, he met the Dutch artist, writer, designer and patron Theo Van Dusberg (1883-1931). In 1917, they co-founded a magazine with Van Dusberg as the editor. They named the magazine "De Stijl", which means "style" (English pronunciation is similar to "condensed").
Theo Van Dusberg (1883-1931)
De stijl declared that natural forms would be "completely eradicated" because they were "obstacles to pure artistic expression". The only thing that really matters is to create a work that can find unity among the relationships of color, space, lines and forms. They concluded that this concept applies to all kinds of art forms from architecture to product design.
This was confirmed by de stijl’s early participant, Dutch furniture carpenter and architect Gerrit Litterfield (1888-1964). In 1923, Ritfield, immersed in de stijl’s aesthetics, made a "red and blue chair" by using the primary colors and black lines of mondriaan’s Neo-Modelism, which looked like a three-dimensional version of mondriaan’s painting. The back of the chair is painted red and the seat is charming dark blue. The designer painted yellow pigment on the visible port of the chair, which made the black wooden frame present a more lively style than before.
Gerrit Littlefield, The Red and Blue Chair
In 1924, Ritfield designed a house according to de stijl’s criteria, and this "Schroeder House" in Utrecht has been listed in the UNESCO World Heritage List. "Schroeder House" is like a painting by mondriaan that people can live in. Its front is a rectangular plane, the concrete wall is painted white, and behind it are the windows on the ground floor and the second floor, each with a painted lintel: one is red and the other is blue. The interior of the building also continues the characteristics of Neo-Modelism or de stijl.
Schroeder Residential Exterior Location
Inside Schroeder’s residence
In the same year, under the influence of Malevic’s supremacism and Russian constructivism, Dusberg proposed to introduce diagonal lines into a series of "anti-composition" paintings. He thought that vertical lines and horizontal lines were too dull and monotonous, while diagonal lines were dynamic, which could bring vitality and momentum to the picture. This is unacceptable to mondriaan. After several quarrels, the founder of Neo-Modelism left de stijl in 1925. Perhaps the former neo-modeling idea has been deeply rooted in people’s hearts, or perhaps Dusberg’s basic essentialism was too short and mixed. In 1931, de stijl was dissolved after his death.
In 1940, mondriaan moved to new york and joined the American Association of Abstract Artists. The continuation of his love for jazz music naturally became a hot theme in mondriaan’s creation at the same time, which was manifested in the disappearance of black lines on his screen, leaving only horizontal and vertical lines composed of red, yellow and blue. Broadway Jazz, written in 1943, is mondriaan’s masterpiece. It is full of rhythmic color blocks, blurred interface and spreading momentum in all directions, which seems to be a perfect chapter extracted from environmental music.
Mondriaan’s aesthetics extends from architecture to design. Yves saint roland, a French fashion designer, owns four works by mondriaan, which were hung in his luxurious apartment in Paris. In 1965, yves saint roland produced a sleeveless loose wool dress, which was decorated with the primary color blocks and black straight lines in mondriaan’s Composition of Red, Yellow and Blue (1930). It appeared on the cover of French vogue magazine in the autumn of 1965, which triggered the upsurge of mondriaan-style decorative elements, and its popularity continues to this day, which shows the success of this Dutch artistic criterion.
Composition of Red, Yellow and Blue (1930)
Yves saint roland produced a sleeveless loose wool dress, decorated with the primary color blocks and black straight lines in mondriaan’s Composition of Red, Yellow and Blue, which appeared on the cover of French vogue magazine in autumn 1965.
Mondriaan’s original work is a philosophy of "less is more", and he hopes that his art is indestructible, extremely simple, rigorous and careful, pure and clean and noble. He wants to overcome "the supremacy of the individual" with a harmonious and unified concept that everyone can understand.
"mondriaan and de stijl" exhibition site
The exhibition will last until March 1, 2021.
(References in this article: 150 Years of Modern Art by Will Gomez, Modern Art by Amy dempsey, In Art, etc.)
Source: The Paper.
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