Dina M Wilks

Known as the De Stijl movement, Mondrian labeled his new style, Neo-Plasticism, referring to the movement of art from natural settings and forms to art that reflects a more modern, ‘scientific’ look; the pursuit of visual perfection.  Using lines and geometric forms combined with bright, primary colors, the De Stijl movement took root in the Netherlands.  

 

Highly influenced by cubist painters such as Picasso and Georges Braque, Neo-Plasticism became Mondrian’s self-appointed legacy to art, dedicating the movement to ‘future men’, (encyclopedia brittanica), a legacy not unfulfilled as the minimalist movement in the 1960’s attests.

             

Throughout his career, Mondrian explored many art styles which were expressed in his various collections from naturalist in the late 1800’s to Post-Impressionist works in the early 1900’s, when his work reflects primary rather than natural colors in more traditional subject matter seen in “Avond’ to his cubist experiments beginning around 1910, reflected in the painting ‘The Gray Tree”, 1911. World War II interrupted his career, but when he reemerged in 1920’s, his work depicted dark lines, geometric forms and primary colors and evolved to colored lines in the 1930’s.

           

Having started out as a draftmans in his childhood, Piet Mondrian’s need to paint was whetted by his successful artist, uncle, Fritz Mondriaanm, and Mondrian later developeded the need to fuse nature and abstraction to an art form where abstraction became the base, the influence, the foundation of his art.  Mondrian felt freed by this new vision of painting, and his works placed him in the pivotal art history role moving away from traditional art toward abstract art.