Andrew Graham-Dixon TV - In Modrian's Studio TV - Piet Mondrian - Simon Schama TV - James Fox TV -
10,259. Piet Mondrian: Mondrian moves closer to grid-form abstraction. (Art & Artists: Mondrian) Andrew Graham-Dixon, The High Art of the Low Countries III: Daydreams and Nightmares
10,260. Mondrian took his dreams elsewhere: New York. (Art & Artists: Mondrian) ibid.
11,321. Paris December 1920 … Piet Mondrian is forty-eight years old … His studio is the heart of his creativity. In Mondrian’s Studio, Sky Arts 2013
11,322. In the summer of 1914 Mondrian returns to Holland, to the bedside of his father who was ill. ibid.
11,323. The Dada movement occupies the high ground. ibid.
11,324. For Mondrian, art and life must be the same thing. ibid.
11,325. Mondrian arrives in New York on 3rd October 1940. ibid.
11,326. His New York period draws its inspiration from the Boogie Woogie. ibid.
11,327. I construct lines and color combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things ...
I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true. Piet Mondrian, letter to H P Bremmer 1914
11,328. The cultivated man of today is gradually turning away from natural things, and his life is becoming more and more abstract. Natural (external) things become more and more automatic, and we observe that out vital attention fastens more and more on internal things ... Art will become the product of another duality in man: the product of cultivated externality and of 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. Piet Mondrian, De Stijl October 1917
11,329. The object must be eliminated from the picture. (Artists: Mondrian & Picture) Piet Mondrian
11,330. I wish to approach truth as closely as is possible, and therefore I abstract everything until I arrive at the fundamental quality of objects. (Artists: Mondrian & Objects & Truth) Piet Mondrian
11,331. Art today is condemned to a separate existence. For present day Life is essentially Tragic. But in some distant future Art and Life will be one. Piet Mondrian
11,332. The essence of painting has actually always been to make it plastically perceptible through colour and line. (Artists: Mondrian & Painting) Piet Mondrian
11,333. In order to approach the spiritual in art, one employs reality as little as possible. (Artists: Mondrian & Reality) Piet Mondrian
117,989. It wasn’t until autumn 1914 that Mondrian had the epiphany which would bring true abstraction into the world. (Civilisation & Creativity & Culture & Art & Artists: Mondrian) Simon Schama, Civilisations s1e9: The Vital Spark
139,239. Mondrian: His rejection of nature might seem strange to us today but it came out of a transformative moment in our history. (Art & Artists: Mondrian) James Fox, Nature & Us: A History through Art III: Future Nature