Originally published in Dutch to accompany a 2014 exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (now Kunstmuseum Den Haag), this important survey of a pivotal period in the life of Piet Mondrian is now available in English. Drawn to the Cubist work of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, Mondrian spent two years in Paris, from 1912 to 1914, that led him to begin experimenting with an entirely original abstract style. Using a cubist palette of grey and ochre, the artist transformed the landscapes and architectural facades of his earlier figurative works into compositional structures of increasing complexity and abstraction. Upon his return to the Netherlands in 1914, the artist exhibited the 17 works he had painted during those two significant years in France. This volume maps Cubism's influence on artists working in the Netherlands at that time, and demonstrates Mondrian's central role in bridging the gap between the French Cubists and their Dutch contemporaries. Accompanying over 300 illustrations - including close details of key works - is a chronology by Mondrian expert Hans Janssen tracking the artist's development within the context of its time.

This publication spotlights the celebrated modern artist Piet Mondrian's early career, a prolific period that saw the artist focus on figurative landscape painting. Primarily made during the artist's time in Amsterdam at the turn of the twentieth century, Mondrian's dense, small-scale paintings depict the surrounding Dutch landscape - notably irrigation ditches, canals and farm buildings. The compositions are characterised by complex interactions of light and dark planes, which the artist forms through thick, pigmented strokes of green and brown paint. Marking the last decade of the artist's engagement with figurative painting, Mondrian's exploration of the interrelationships between colour and space during this period forms the basis for his subsequent abstract works, whilst reflecting the artist's lifelong interest in nature.

Piet Mondrian: A Life is the first dedicated biography of Piet Mondrian to be published in English. Hans Janssen’s remarkable book provides a long overdue, in-depth and compelling account of the life of perhaps the most influential abstract artist of the 20th century. Janssen, former chief curator at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag – home to the world’s largest collection of Mondrian works – draws on his own research and that of a cohort of distinguished scholars, as well as previously unknown letters, writings and archival materials, to reveal unexpected new insights into the artist’s life and the circles in which he moved. From his student years in Amsterdam to his life in Paris in the years after the First World War, to his time in London and New York from 1938 until his death, Mondrian is here presented as someone in constant interaction with the world around him. Far from the lonely, isolated figure he is often portrayed as, immersing himself in the purity of abstraction to mask his feelings, Mondrian is revealed as an artist reacting to the emergence of modernity and who took the lead in shaping art for the world in which we now live. Translated into English on the 150th anniversary year of the artist’s birth, Piet Mondrian: A Life is a vital contribution to the scholarship on Mondrian as well as the wider history of the development of abstract art.

Nachdruck des Originals von 1937 ber die Mundarten Ostfrieslands.

In the early 1920s, a group of Dutch artists and architects influenced by some of the ideas of Dada, formed a movement called De Stijl (The Style). The Story of De Stijl presents work by Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, Gerrit Rietveld, and the other members of this influential group, as well as archival photographs of the artists. The authors - experts in this seminal abstract style that encompassed painting, sculpture, architecture, interior design, and more - explore the evolution of the movement not just through traditional art-historical analysis, but also through anecdotes, conversations, articles, and other contemporary sources. With more than 325 colour illustrations, The Story of De Stijl makes clear the lasting importance and influence of this once avant-garde movement.