Piet Mondrian in his artist quotes on abstract painting & life - free resource, Dutch art history

Piet Mondrian in quotes - the artist from The Netherlands on colors, abstract painting, pure art and the Dutch De Stijl movement - free resource for students, pupils, art-lovers and teachers in Dutch art history

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Mondrian founded with Theo van Doesburg the Dutch artist-group De Stijl. In many letters the two artists exchanged their ideas on a pure & colorful art style; this is an important source for Mondrian’s quotes…
Mondrian explains his use of primary colors in a strict puristic art-approach - to create paintings as a visual bridge to the spiritual world. Still living in The Netherlands he already declared: ‘Art is higher than reality and has no direct relation to reality’. Mondrian was strongly connected with anthroposophy, then.

In his artist quotes he also clarifies the necessity of using only the horizontal and vertical line - constructed ‘consciously’ but not ‘calculating’ - all guided by a higher intuition, and brought to harmony. On the other hand, Mondrian declared later during his last years in the United States the necessity of destruction, to enable the creation of a real modern painting whick broke with art tradition.
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Some selected quotes of artist Piet Mondrian - as a short introduction of his extended quotes in the PDF:

• ’…art even now forms a transition to the finer regions, which perhaps I am incorrect in calling spiritual, for everything that has form is not yet spiritual, as I read somewhere. But it is nonetheless the path of ascension away from matter…’ - Mondrian’s quote, 1909, in his letter to Querido

• ’A form must be of its own time if it is to be recognized: one cannot relate to what one is not or does not have – Thus all that is of the past is to be rejected.’ - quote of Mondrian, from his Paris’ sketchbooks, 1912-1914

• ’I am searching for the proper harmony of rhythm and unchanging proportion, as I wrote in the article. And I cannot tell you how difficult it is. (reacting on Theo van Doesburg’s critic on the strong domination of the regular grid in Mondrian’s paintings, that year)’ - quote, Sept 1919, in his letter from Paris to Theo van Doesburg
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  selection of free art-resources on Dutch artist Piet Mondrian:

  • biographical notes on Piet Mondrian, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet_Mondrian
  • artist-quotes of ànd about Mondrian, Wikiquote: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Piet_Mondrian
  • images of the painting art of Piet Mondrian, Wikiart: https://www.wikiart.org/en/Search/Mondrian
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    editor: Fons Heijnsbroek / Matrozenhof (FotoDutch on Wikiquote):<br>[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/User:FotoDutch]