Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan

Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, (1872-1944), usually known as Piet Mondrian, Dutch painter, and founder of the [De Stijl]? art movement.

Mondriaan was born at Amersfoort? in The Netherlandson [7 March]? 1872.

His career started as a teacher but while he taught, he himself was studying painting. Most of his work from this period is naturalistic or impressionistic in style. On display at the in the Hague's Gemeente Museum are a number of paintings from this period, including such post-impressionist paintings "The Red Mill" and "Trees in Moonlight". (Examples of his more familiar geometric later work are also on display).

He was deeply struck by an exhibition of Cubism? held in Amsterdam in 1911 and this was to profoundly affect his later work.

His painting "[Broadway Boogie Woogie]?" at the MOMA? is a highly influential painting in the school of abstract geometric painting. The piece is constructed of a number of shimmering squares of bright color that leap from the canvas then appear to shimmer back drawing you into those neon lights.

Much of his art is the familiar colored squares of three or four parts (Meyer Shapiro: "asymmetrically grouped, segmented forms") that look as though anyone, a child, could do them, but seem to extend beyond the canvas and are much fun to contemplate their development in art history.

He died in New York in 1944.

Reference: Schapiro. Mondriaan: On the Humanity of Abstract Painting (George Braziller 1995).