1872-1944

Hardly conceivable that Piet Mondrian's had severely geometrical compositions its origin in picturesque, filigree landscape studies. With 20 years as a student of the Art Academy in Amsterdam, he felt close to Impressionism. In the neutral Netherlands, he was long spared from the turmoil of the First World War, was able to follow his inspiration and Theosophical studies. First fauvist and neo impressionistic elements appeared in his paintings.

In Paris, which he visited for the first time in 1912, he participated in several "Salons des Independants" part, which influenced him the Cubism of Braque and Pablo Picasso. Mondrian reduced as a tree continues to horizontal and vertical lines to black, orthogonal beams the image area divided and he filled the gaps with white and primary colours.

Due to his profound knowledge of abstraction, he founded the painter, designer and architect group "De Stijl" in 1917-the Dutch equivalent of the German "Bauhaus". In his paintings if everything in balance, the depth disappear, so that the "pure “reality remains.

Mondrian visionary style left significant traces in art, design and architecture, also in New York, where the artist finally emigrated in 1940.