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Piet Mondrian Quotes
1872–1944 Netherlands
Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan (after 1912: Piet Mondrian). (March 7, 1872 – February 1, 1944) was a Dutch painter starting in Dutch impressionism but soon started to develop abstraction from his landscape paintings. He became an inspiring leader of the De Stijl art movement and group, together with Theo van Doesburg.
Random Piet Mondrian quote
41 quotes
..the elements of form have a particular aspect; every fragment, every plane, every line has its proper character.
By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting a new plastic reality will be created.
You can so wonderfully be yourself here [in Paris].
'Masculine and feminime, vertical and horizontal.
Nature moves me deeply; I paint nature (now) only in a different way..
The surface of things gives enjoyment, their interiority gives life.
Environment, education, experience, make men conscious of passing reality but overwhelm their intuitive capacity when this is not very strong.
Art will not only continue but will realise itself more and more. By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting a new plastic reality will be created.
It is of small importance whether De Stijl still exists as a 'group'; a new style was born, a new aesthetic created; it needs only to be understood – and cultivated.
We arrive at a portrayal of other things, such as the laws governing matter. These are the great generalities – Which do not change.
That is what we are against [the ancient-Greek ideas about art], because that is the key to the classic and tragic finality from which we must free ourselves.
A form must be of its own time if it is to be recognized: one cannot relate to what one is not or does not have – Thus all that is of the past is to be rejected.
The artist make things move, and is moved. He is policeman, motor car, everything at once. He who makes things move also creates rest. That which aesthetically is brought to rest is art.
After your high-handed improvement(?) of 'Neo-plasticism' any co-operation is quite impossible for me.. .For the rest sans rancune - Piet Mondriaan.
Now the only problem is to destroy these lines also through mutual opposition. ..[note under his letter]: I think that the destructive element is too much neglected in art.
Human culture reveals an opposition: diminution of the instinctive faculties and development of the intuitive capacity. A cultivation of instinctive faculties produces human degeneration; a cultivation of intuitive capacities creates human progress.
In his later works Doesburg tried to destroy static expression by diagonal position of his lines. But in this way the feeling of physic equilibrium which is necessary to enjoy a work of art is lost.
I very much like Arp's things. I consider him the only 'pure' artist after Neo/Plasticism.
Well, I think my paintings are fast enough already...
When I first saw the work of the Impressionists, Van Gogh, Van Dongen and the Fauves, I admired it. But I had to seek the true way alone.
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