Piet Mondrian
Few artists encapsulated the spirit of Modernism quite so vividly as Piet Mondrian. In his mature works he advocated for the complete rejection of visually perceived reality as subject matter, and restricted his pictorial language to straight lines, primary colours, and neutral tones of black, white, and grey.
Mondrian sought to capture “a true vision of reality” in his painting, which meant forming a composition not from a fragment of observed reality but rather from an overall abstract view of the harmony of the universe. A painting no longer had to begin from an abstracted view of nature; it could emerge out of purely abstract rules of geometry and colour. The artist also sought to express an ethical dimension through the harmony of his images. Influenced by the puritan tradition of Dutch Calvinism and his belief in Theosophy, his work can be seen as a lifelong quest for purity.
