The Abstract Dutch Master

 

On this date in 1940, Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), moved permanently to New York City. The Dutch painter and art theoretician is regarded as a pioneering artist of abstract art in the 20th century, influencing many others to follow. Though his early paintings reflected an impressionistic style, he changed direction from figurative painting to an increasingly abstract style, ultimately reaching a point where his artistic signature was reduced to the simplest geometric elements during the 1920s as shown above. Outside the artist community, his work was not entirely comprehended though his trademark of colorful, geometric paintings did become popular fashion design elements or for consumer products twenty years after his death. Works from his later period are visually complicated with more lines placed in an overlapping arrangement that is nearly cartographical in appearance. He obsessed over these paintings to the point where his own hands blistered or he made himself sick. Perhaps the mark of another misunderstood artistic genius.