It is difficult to delve into the universe of Piet Mondrian without them Artistic movements transcendental of the 20th century manage to impregnate us with his inventive and revolutionary vocation.
So much so that seven decades after the death of the dutch artist , the association of his vast legacy with the most intrinsic avant-gardes continues to arise unequivocally. However, the evolution of his style from the figuration until the abstraction , it may not be so easy to discern.
That is why the Beyeler Foundation has inaugurated an exhibition seeking to unravel the transformation of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), gathering plays from his own collection and from international loans.
Piet Mondrian, Woman with Spindle, 1893-1896.
On the occasion of 150th anniversary of his birth , the exposition offers a new look at an artist who undoubtedly greatly influenced the 20th century art , and in fields such as design, architecture, fashion and pop culture.
Mondrian Evolution , the first solo exhibition dedicated to the artist in Swiss in 50 years, shows 89 works from private and public collections in Europe and the United States, in a journey that highlights his evolution, the one that during the early nineteenth century revealed landscapes, later becoming creations of modern Art.
“The exhibition focuses above all on the development of Mondrian's early work . The artist was initially influenced by late 19th century Dutch landscape painting, but symbolism and cubism they also played an important role in the artistic development of him ”, they point out from Beyeler Foundation.
Piet Mondrian, Evening: the red tree, 1908-1910.
Born in 1872 in Amersfoort (Netherlands ), it is not surprising his premature contact with the art , since his father was a drawing teacher and his uncle an amateur painter who was influenced by the Hague School of landscape painting, a specifically Dutch form of impressionism.
Calvinist education and training as a teacher of drawing through, between 1892 and 1895 Piet Mondrian studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in amsterdam . Most of the works of this period, decorated by windmills, rivers and farms, indicate the influence of the Hague School.
After forging ties with philosophy, esotericism, and the cubism , after the First World War expressed the ambition of a group of avant-garde artists who began to publish the magazine De Stijl, “seeking to destroy traditions in order to reconfigure all aspects of life on the basis of the essential elements of art, such as he saw them”.
It was not until the early 1920s that he began to focus on a totally non-representational pictorial language, with abstract paintings that show an extensive process that has been debated between intuition and precision, with axes such as the search for unity, self-questioning, and the very essence of the image.
Piet Mondrian, Church Tower at Domburg, 1911.
"He himself used the term 'evolution', but not in the Charles Darwin sense. Mondrian , 'evolution' meant the accumulation of experiences, on which a new phase of artistic development could be built, which in turn led to new insights."
Curated by Ulf Kuster chief curator of the Beyeler Foundation , Kathrin Beßen and Susanne Meyer-Büser, from Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, and, with a catalog designed by renowned graphic designer Irma Boom, the exposition Broadly speaking, it denotes a certain chronology, although it sets out to confront early and late works.
Throughout nine rooms, visitors will notice recurring motifs such as windmills, dunes, the sea, farms reflected in the water, and plants in various states of abstraction, as well as the emblematic neoplasticism tight around geometry, black, white and the primary colors that he captured in works such as ‘Composition with yellow and blue' , from 1932.
Piet Mondrian, Composition with yellow and blue, 1932.
Organized by the Beyeler Foundation in the framework of its 25th anniversary -located in riehen , near basel —, and Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, in collaboration with Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Mondrian Evolution will be available until sunday October 9, 2022.