Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan

Pieter Cornelis known as Piet Mondriaan. Mondriaan was born in 1872 in the Netherlands. He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group.He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism. This consisted of white ground, upon which was painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors. In 1911, Mondrian moved to Paris and This matched the changed signature on his works while in Paris, the influence of the Cubism style of Picasso and Braque appeared almost immediately in Mondrian's work.While Mondrian was eager to absorb the Cubist influence into his work, however, it seems clear that he saw Cubism as 'port of call' on his artistic journey, rather than as a destination. In 1938, Mondrian left Paris in the face of advancing fascism and moved to London. After the Netherlands were invaded and Paris fell in 1940, he left London for New York, where he would remain until his death. Some of Mondrian's later works are difficult to place in terms of his artistic development, because there were quite a few canvases that he began in Paris or London which he only completed months or years later in Manhattan. The finished works from this later period demonstrate an unprecedented business, however, with more lines than any of his work since the 1920s, placed in an overlapping arrangement that is almost cartographical in appearance. He spent many long hours painting on his own until his hands blistered and he sometimes cried or made himself sick. Piet Mondrian died of pneumonia in 1944 and was interred in the Cypress Hill Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Mondrian's works hang in The MOMA,Philadelphia Museum of Art & The Guggenheim.