1872 -1944 · Netherlands, Paris, London and New York

Horizontal, vertical, primary colors and urban rhythm make Piet Mondrian one of the essential founders of modern abstraction.

Piet Mondrian was born in Amersfoort in 1872 and died in New York in 1944. Trained in Amsterdam, he began by painting mills, trees, dunes, canals and farms. These realistic landscapes gradually became brighter, more synthetic and more autonomous in their color. The meeting of Cubism in Paris, from 1911 -1912, accelerated this transformation. Tree, facade, pier and ocean were reduced to networks of lines until the visible motif disappeared. During the First World War, held in the Netherlands, Mondrian exchanged with Theo van Doesburg and participated in the founding of De Stijl in 1917. He then formulated neoplasticism: horizontal and vertical, planes rectangular, primary colors, white, black and gray must produce a dynamic balance free of imitation. Table I and the Compositions are not mechanical grids; asymmetry, width of lines and proportions create a constantly readjusted tension. Composition n°10, resulting from the motif of the pier and the ocean, preserves the memory of the landscape in the sign. Evolution also recalls the role of theosophy in its search for a transition from the material to the spiritual. After Paris and London, Mondrian arrived in New York in 1940. The city, its streets and boogie-woogie released the color of the black line. Broadway Boogie-Woogie and Victory Boogie-Woogie then made it vibrate painting like an urban plan, dance and syncopated music. The "Piet Mondrian" selection notably compares Broadway Boogie-Woogie and Victory Boogie-Woogie. His reading favors details.

Mondrian does not simplify the world: he seeks an active balance beneath his appearance, where each line limits a force and each color sets the whole thing in motion.