Biography

1872 - Pieter Cornelis Mondrian is born in Amersfoort.

1892 - Having obtained a number of art qualifications, Mondrian moves to Amsterdam to continue his artistic training at the Rijksacademie. He takes courses there for three years, passing them all.

1900 - Starts painting landscapes and features like windmills and farmhouses in the Gein area. Human figures gradually disappear from his work.

1908 - Joins the Theosophical Society, which will have a major influence on his ideas about spirituality. Visits Domburg in Zeeland for the first time, where he meets modern artists like Jan Toorop. There, he paints in a luminist style, using bright colours.

1911 - At an exhibition Mondrian sees the work of French cubists Picasso and Braque. He prepares to move to Paris, in order to continue his artistic development.

1912 - Moves to Paris and registers as an ‘alien’, leaving everything behind, including his fiancée. Initially paints trees in an angular cubist style, but shifts increasingly towards urban motifs and abstract images.

1914 - While visiting his father in the Netherlands Mondrian becomes ‘stranded’ by the outbreak of the First World War.  He continues on the path to abstraction which he had embarked on in Paris.

1915 – 1917 - Lives and works in Laren and Blaricum. Makes his first completely abstract painting (Composition No. 3 with Color Planes, 1915). Spends a lot of time dancing and enjoying music. Meets his most important patron, Sal Slijper, and artists Bart van der Leck and Theo van Doesburg.

1917 - Artists’ group and magazine De Stijl founded with Theo van Doesburg, Bart van der Leck, Vilmos Huszár, Gerrit Rietveld and others.

1921 - Leaves the Netherlands for good. From this point he refers to his style of painting, featuring horizontal and vertical lines, the primary colours and the non-colours grey, black and white, as ‘neo-plasticism’, for which he became world-famous. His studio with its coloured shapes on the walls becomes an attraction in the art world.

1925 -1931 - Texture and brushstrokes become increasingly prominent features of Mondrian’s work. Each plane reflects light in a different way, creating subtle differences in colour.

1933 - Painter Charley Toorop arranges for Composition with Yellow Lines to be donated to Kunstmuseum Den Haag (known as the Gemeentemuseum at the time) to mark Mondrian’s sixtieth birthday. It is temporarily hung in a stairwell.

1938 - Mondrian is forced to flee Paris as he has been branded a ‘degenerate’ artist by the German regime. Spends two years in London, where he narrowly avoids falling victim to a bombing raid.

1940 - Leaves for New York, where he is met with open arms by artist Harry Holtzman, collector Peggy Guggenheim and others. The city’s lively art scene inspires innovations in his work. His famous uninterrupted lines of the past twenty years make way for small blocks of colour.

1944 - Mondrian dies in a New York hospital on 1 February. His final painting, Victory Boogie Woogie, remains unfinished in his studio.