Piet Mondrian: Pure Abstraction.
The 20th century is distinguished in art history for one invention above all:
abstraction. The Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) was a pioneer
in this development. His reputation rests on about 250 abstract paintings
dating from 1917 to 1944, a modest number for over 25 years of work. Each
painting was worked and reworked, built layer by layer toward an equilibrium
of form, color, and surface.
Mondrian named his style “neoplasticism.” That is how he
translated his own Dutch phrase nieuwe beelding, which also means “new
form” or “new image.” The style was based, he explained,
on an absolute harmony of straight lines and pure colors underlying the