Mondrian Exhibition Shows Artist’s Transformation

THE HAGUE (Agence France-Presse)—A new exhibition in The Hague shows how renowned Dutch painter Piet Mondrian became so captivated by the light in the southern Zeeland province that he moved from figurative to abstract works.

The Gemeentemuseum, which has the most Mondrians of any Dutch museum, puts the spotlight on the paintings he made in his time in Zeeland between 1909 and 1915.

The coastal resort of Domburg attracted the young Mondrian (1872-1944) at a pivotal time in his career. He came there as an elegant realist painter but left only after questioning all of the aspects of his art and fundamentally changing his outlook.

During long walks in the dunes, rubbing elbows with the colony of artists that settled in Domburg because of the exceptional quality of the light, influenced by theosophical thinking, Mondrian simplified his works.

He started to put light effects in his work first in the Luminist style, which focuses on realistic rendering of atmospheric light, and later moved towards cubism which he had seen in Paris .

Mondrian no longer tried to make a near photographic copy of reality. Instead he started coloring his subjects as he saw fit to show how he saw the effects of the light.

The sand of the Dunes close to Domburg (1910) is a light blue, the Lighthouse at Westkapelle (1910) lights up in pink hues, and trees, a recurring theme in Mondrian's work, turn red as night falls in Evening, red tree (1910).

After this initial change Mondrian turned more and more to cubism to free himself from the confines of visual reality. Churches and trees were pared down on his canvasses to an interplay of horizontal and vertical lines. Mondrian felt this style spiritualizes reality.

In 1914 he painted Groynes and Sea, a collection of lines within an oval shape, his last painting to have a title reflecting what it portrayed.

As diagonal and curves lines disappeared from his work over time, he started referring to his paintings as compositions.

He whittled his paintings down to geometric shapes in black and white or primary colors with titles like Composition in black and white (1915).

It would take some time before Mondrian would finally arrive at his unique style, which he called Neo-Plasticism, which cemented his reputation as an artist, but as he left Domburg in 1915 he had found his voice.

Via Paris, London, and New York , Mondrian would continue to search for the essential forms and the rhythm and balance in his paintings. The pinnacle of his Neo-Plasticism is probably Victory Boogie-Woogie (1944), which remained unfinished as Mondrian died from pneumonia while he was working on it.

The exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum shows the transformation of Mondrian from a realist painter by way of the Domburg light to ultra rigid abstract Neo-Plasticims of Victory Boogie-Woogie on display in the last room of the show.

"The light of Zeeland —Mondrian at Domburg," runs until August 5 at the Hague Gemeentemuseum.