Piet Mondrian

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. 

Mondrian was exposed to art from an early age; his father was a qualified drawing teacher and his uncle a painter. His earliest works were pastoral scenes of the Dutch countryside that showed the influence of impressionism, pointillism and fauvism. The earliest elements of abstraction in his work began to appear in the early 1900s, but it would be his exposure to the Theosophical movement that would lead to a profound leap in his development as an artist. Theosophy posits an "essential truth" that underlies science, religion and philosophy, and the belief that one can achieve a more profound understanding of nature through spirituality than empirical evidence alone. Mondrian's mature abstract work would be one of the routes through which he sought out this spiritual knowledge.

He produced his first grid-based paintings in 1919, and by the end of 1920 the style for which he would become famous had begun to take shape. As the years progressed, his black lines began to take precedence over the blocks of colour in his paintings. He viewed these lines as representing opposing forces, the horizontal symbolizing the natural world and the vertical representing the spiritual. As the likelihood of war grew in the late 1930s, the artist moved to London in 1938 and then to New York in 1940. There, his work began to undergo a radical transformation, as he threw himself into the bustle of his new home. Responding to the influence of jazz and the energy of the city grid, he produced paintings of shimmering colour, full of rhythm and movement. This new direction was cut short by his death in 1944.