Piet
Mondriaan
Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan was born on 7 march 1872 in Amersfoort, Holland. In 1889 he got the certificate in drawing witch gave him the right to give drawing lessons for primary education and in 1892 he got the certificate in drawing witch gave him the right to give drawing lessons for secondary education. While he was giving these lessons, he attended evening-classes himself at the Rijksacademy in Amsterdam, Holland.
Mondriaan painted a lot
during this period. His work from this period is mostly naturalistic
and impressionistic.
From 1908 to 1910 Mondriaan lived in the
Zeeuws village Loverendale in Holland.
During this period he painted the famous Seri of paintings about
the church of Domburg. In 1910 Mondriaan moved back to Amsterdam. Back
in Amsterdam he became
a member of an alliance for artists, were he got in contact with the symbolic
artist Jan Toorop and several pointillist
artists. Mondriaan got influenced by their work and started experimenting
with symbolism and pointillism as well.
At the end of 1910 Mondriaan
became a member of the board of the 'Modern Art Cirkle' in Amsterdam.
In 1911
the 'Modern Art Cirkle' organized an exhibition of France cubist art in
Amsterdam. Mondriaan was very impressed by the cubist art. Soon after
the exhibition he moved to Paris and started to make cubist paintings.
During that period, Paris was the place to be for artists. While Mondriaan was
living in Paris he got many chances to attain international exhibitions and the critics he
got were fabulous.
Due
to his fathers illness, Mondriaan had to move back to Holland in 1914
and because of the beginning of the first World War, Mondriaan was forced
to stay. He moved several times in Holland and finally moved to Laren.
In Laren he came into contact with Theo van Doesburg, who was
searching for members of the new artists alliance The
Style (1915).
Mondriaan was impressed by Theo van Doesburg and his ideas, but did not
decide to become member of the alliance till 1916, when he met Bart
van der Leck. 
As a member of The Style Mondriaan started to write articles for the magazine of the alliance, called 'The Style' as well. In these articles Mondriaan tried to explain his ideas and principals, also the ideas and principals of The Style. Mostly it were pure geometric-abstract paintings.
In
1919 , after the war, Mondriaan moved back to Paris, where he could live
at his former address again. Due to his 50th birthday in 1922, The
Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam, Holland, organized an overview exhibition
of his work. Therefor Mondriaan traveled to Holland, where he met the architect
Oud. That was the beginning of a close friendship that ended in 1922 in
Paris because of a misunderstanding about the meaning and the role of architecture
in modern society.
Soon after the end of this friendship, Mondriaan became a member of the international art alliance of Paris, 'Cercle et carré'. During that period Mondriaan came into contact with Wassily Kandinsky (member of 'Der Blaue Reiter', one of the sub-movements of the expressionists).
In
1925 his long and close friendship with Theo van Doesburg ended. This
because Van Doesburg started, in spite of the principals of The Style
and their own principals, experimenting with the color green and with
diagonal lines. Theo van Doesburg stepped out of the alliance The Style
and soon after he started the new alliance 'Abstraction-Creation'. This
meant the end for the alliance 'The Style', however the other members
went on carrying out the ideas and principals.
Mondriaan also started experimenting with diagonals and different colors. In 1929
Mondriaan and Van Doesburg met again and became friends again. Mondriaan decided to become
a member of Van Doesburg his new alliance 'Abstraction-Creation'.
In
1938 Mondriaan moved, because of the threat of Nazi-Germany, to London.
In 1940 he moved to New York, because of the bombing of London by the
Germans. Mondriaan stayed in New York till 1944 when he died. During this
period in New York he was surrounded by a group of young American artists.
During his life Mondriaan was influenced by the many people he came into contact with. Still we can see Mondriaan as one of the most important artists of the art movement The Style.
