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Piet Cornelis Mondrian (1872-1944)
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Blog Piet Cornelis Mondrian
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 Netherlands on March 7, 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). [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Piet Cornelis Mondrian.]
The Great Books: Piet Cornelis Mondrian
This web page is part of a biographical database on Great Ideas. These are living ideas that have shaped, defined and directed world culture for over 2,500 years. By definition the Great Ideas are radical. As such they are sometimes misread, or distorted by popular simplifications. Understanding a Great Idea demands personal engagement. Our selection of Great Ideas is drawn from literature and philosophy, science, art, music, theatre, and cinema. We also include biographies of pivotal historical and religious figures, as well as contributions from women and other historically under-represented minorities. The result is an integrated multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary database built upon the framework of a Great Books Core List developed by Mortimer Adler (1902-2001) nearly 50 years ago.
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Piet Cornelis Mondrian
The Road to Expressionism
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