![]() ![]() ![]() But Janssen argues that it was a gradual transition, which involved Mondrian “turning the whole landscape tradition inside out, step by step, until he finally hit upon what became his abstract art.” ![]() Mondrian’s Ocean 5 hangs in the background.Īt first glance, Mondrian’s shift from painting traditional Dutch landscapes to inventing works of geometric abstraction appears to be one of the most radical re-inventions in art history. “He gave notice on his rented accommodation, broke off his engagement, sold as many paintings as possible, took the remainder to friends for safekeeping, and had his name removed from Amsterdam’s population register.” Peggy Guggenheim in Venice, 1957. This was at its starkest in 1912, when Mondrian, who had just turned 40, left Amsterdam to live in Paris, where he was determined to discover the Cubist secrets of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque firsthand. ![]() But most of all, Janssen’s book, which is the first comprehensive biography of Mondrian to be published in English, is a fascinating study of an artist so obsessed with his life’s work that he would let nothing and no one get in its way. Hans Janssen, the former chief curator of The Hague’s Kunstmuseum, which has the largest collection of Mondrians in the world, paints a particularly vivid portrait of these hazardous peripeties in Piet Mondrian: A Life. ![]()
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