The Mondrian Movement
...sts such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque helped Mondrian to formulate his own form of abstraction. Mondrian eventually came into contact with a few people who would, collectively, have an enormous impact on each other, as well as the rest of the world. This group, which included such famous names as J.J.P. Oud, Gerrit Reitveld, and Theo van Doesburg expressed their radical visions through a magazine called “De Stijl”. Their decree was summed up in the first few sentences, “The cultivated man of today is gradually turning away from natural things, and his life is becoming more and more abstract…it is the same with art. Art will become the product of another duality in man: the product of a cultivated externality and of an inwardness deepened and more conscious. As a pure representation of the human mind, art will express itself in an aesthetically purified, that is to say, abstract form.” This group fed off of each other, and analyzed each other’s work through the eyes of their De Stijl philosophy. Mondrian’s work during the De Stijl years largely evolved from simple rectangular planes to the meticulous compositions we associate with his name today, including the strong primary colors and forceful black and white integration. His first major writing associated with the De Stijl laid the groundwork for his Neo-Plastic theory, entitled “The New Plastic in Painting”. He returned again to Paris in 1919 where his neo-plasticism would take root. His “plastic art” was intended to be equivalent to nature, but without any discernible relationship to any object. Eventually in 1925, Mondrian resigned from the De Stijl because of a disagreement with Theo van Doesburg. He was only a member for two years, but his legacy with the group is still widely known. In 1940 Mondrian made his final move to New York. He had a great admiration for Americans, and made friends quickly in the art circle. Among these first friends were famous names such as Harry Holtzman and Fritz Glarner. And, it was here in New York that his paintings endured their last radical change. He began employing more colors, and a hint of a third dimension as the colored bars ran over each other. Also, his once black bars were now colored, and even cut up into squares. Perhaps this change was a result of his move into a bustling city with square block plans, a progressive country, or his exposure to jazz music. His organization of his paintings focused on the underlying structure of what he observed, as well as his surroundings. No matter what the cause for his final deviation from his previous work, it left a lasting impression on those in close contact, as well as everyone who would view his work. Mondrian died of Pneumonia in New York on February 1st, 1944. One of the first to take on Mondrian’s ideals was Burgoyne Diller. Diller’s work, being on display at an exhibition, was described by Lawrence Campbell as “stepping into a shrine devoted to Mondrian’s Neo-plasticism.” Diller saw his first Mondrian painting in the early 1930’s, and every piece he painted thereafter had a strong Mondrian sense, and he never really deviated from the Neo-Plastic rules and discipline. Another painter who felt the tug of Neo-Plasticism was Leon Polk Smith. He was overwhelmed by Mondrian’s art, and used it as the foundation for his philosophy, but he restructured it, and manipulated certain aspects as he saw fit. In the early 1940’s Mondrian painted Victory Boogie-Woogie, and Smith responded to this in his own, Homage to Victory Boogie-Woogie No. 1 (1946). Smith used the same basic forms, but instilled his own principles into the painting. He started introducing diagonals, something Mondrian would certainly fret over, and the beginnings of this can be seen in this painting. The strictly regimented right angles and squares of Mondrian were beginning to float, and develop into new shapes. Smith took his love of the unconventional all the way to the shape of his canvas with the use of Tondo’s. Smith wanted every element of his painting to be equal with one another; a great example of this is his Black-White Repeat (1953). While in Mondrian’s work the presence of disequilibrium of shapes is quite evident. In Smith’s later efforts he worked under the notion of “freeing Mondrian’s concept of space so that it could be expressed with the use of the curved line as well as the straight.” These paintings such as Black Blend (1960) were radical in that they were expressing Mondrian tectonics in a way that did not resemble Mondrian at all. Ilya Bolotowsky was ...