Art History

Piet Mondrian was born in Amersfoort, Netherlands on March 7,1872. As a young boy his family moved to Winterswijk in the east of the country where he was introduced to art at a very early age. His father Pieter Cornelius Mordriaan was a drawing teacher as well as his uncle Fritz Mondriaan.

In 1892, Mondrian entered the Academy of Fine Art in Amsterdam and began his career as a teacher in Primary Education, but he also practiced painting. Most of his paintings were landscapes of his native country such as , windmills, fields and rivers.

In 1911, Mondrian moved to Paris and changed his name by dropping an “a” from Mondriaan to show his departure from The Netherlands. While in Paris he was influenced by the Cubist style of Picasso and George Braque and this appeared heavily in his work. 

In 1938, Mondrian left Paris and moved to London. After the Netherlands were invaded and Paris fell in 1940 he left London for Manhattan, where he remained until his death. 

After his death, two Mondrian friends opened an exhibit known as “The Wall Works.” They have been exhibited twice sine Mondrian’s death at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art (1983/1995-96), once in SoHo at the Carpenter + Hochman Gallery (1984), once each at Galerie Tokoro in Tokyo, Japan (1993), the XXII Biennial of Sao Paulo (1994), The University of Michigan (1995) and for the first time in Europe at the Akademie der Kunste (Academy of The Arts), in Berlin (February 22- April 22, 2007).