piet mondrian
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"Broadway Boogie Woogie" by Piet Mondrian is the culminating achievement of his New York
Period. Broadway Boogie Woogie was one of many pieces of Mondrian's that was exhibited at a
retrospective of his life's work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The exhibit
traced the evolution of Mondrian's artistic career and its many changes.
The exhibit, "Piet Mondrian: 1872-1944" was the first major show to to study his career leading
up to and through is discovery of abstract. There were near 170 paintings and drawings in the
show from his early naturalistic paintings to his abstract neo-plasticism New York period
(Kimmerlman B1). The exhibit did not only show Mondrian's work but how he worked; included
in the show were his sketches, many works in progress, and a recreation of his final studio in New
York City.
Piet Mondrian was born in Amersfoort , Holland in 1872 and started to study art a very early age.
At the age of fourteen he moved to Amsterdam to study painting. His early work was based in
nineteenth-century Dutch realism. Mondrian's work transformed into the abstract slowly with the
use of pure bright color after seeing the modernism work of Seurat, Matisse, and van Gogh in
1908 at a exhibition in Amsterdam. Mondrian explored modernism while living in Domberg, an
avant-garde art colony along the coast in southwestern Holland. At the same time he became
interested in the religious philosophy of theosophy, a blend of Eastern and Western religions
which centers around the movement of humanity towards a spiritual unity. Theosophy also held
that geometric shapes represented different stages in spiritual development which greatly
interested Mondrian and influenced his work (Kermit 14).
Another major influence on Mondrian was works of Cézanne and the early cubism of Picasso
which he discovered at another exhibition in Amsterdam (Bois 331). Mondrian was so moved by
cubism he moved to Paris in 1912 to study the style. Here he studied cubism and moved towards
pure abstractism until he returned to Holland to visti his father (Bois 33).
While in Holland, Mondrian became stranded there when World War I broke out in 1914. He
returned to Domburg to again explore and elaborate on the motifs that he studied before with what
he learned while in Paris. During this time Mondrian created his first pure abstract painting,
Composition in Line.
Mondrian returned to Paris soon after the war and devoted himself almost completely in his art.
During this time he arrived at his signature style which he called neo-plasticism. The first work in
this style is Composition with Yellow, Red, Black, Blue, and Gray which he completed in 1920.
Mondrian's neo-plasticism style used pure primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) and "non-colors"
(white, black, and gray) in rectilinear forms. Mondrian wanted to create a "dynamic balanced"
relationship between lines and planes of color and non-color based on a grid (Milner 161).
Mondrian work for several years changing his neo-plastic style by using fewer planes and not
using all three primary colors at once. The next major development of neo-plasticism came after
his move to the United States.
World War II was starting in Europe and Mondrian moved to New York City to escape the war in
1940. He was greatly influenced by the fast paced city life and jazz's new movement of
boogie-woogie. He reworked many paintings he finished in Europe for a solo exhibition to give
them more of the feeling of jazz and the city (Milner 210).
Mondrian's next new variation of the neo-plasticism style is know as the New York period.
Mondrian felt great artistic freedom and found his traditional black lines and areas of color too
traditional. He replaced the traditional black lines with color and used smaller areas of just one
color. His culminating achievement of this period was Broadway Boogie Woogie. His style
changed again slightly, instead of sold color lines they became, ". . . trains of speckled color;
which were divided into small units like the tesserae of a mosaic, mainly yellow, alternating with
red, gray and blue (Shapiro 67)." This was Mondrian's last finished painting. When he died in
February of 1944, he left Victory Boogie Woogie which he was reworking for the third time in a
near finish state (Bois 84).
Broadway Boogie Woogie is the masterpiece of Mondrian's New York period. Champa says,
"Broadway carries that full burden of the artist's aesthetic accomplishment at its most mature and
its most complex (127)." Looking at Broadway one can see the influence of the city and the new
jazz movement of boogie-woogie on this and his other New York paintings. The oil on canvas
painting was given anonymously to The Museum of Modern Art in New York soon after his
death. It is a large unframed painting, 127 cm by 127 cm which he finished in 1943 (Milner 220).
Not even knowing the title of Broadway Boogie Woogie it is easy to see the feelings and
excitement that Mondrian was trying to get across. The hustle and bustle of the life in New York
at night can been seen along with the excitement of jazz music the two major influences of his
work during that period. Seeing the exhibit of most of his work it became very easy to follow his
style and find meaning in the abstract. It seemed that after creating Broadway and Victory Boogie
Woogie Mondrian had a new vision and idea where he was going to take his work. One can only
imagine what else he had envisioned.
Bibliography
Bois, Yve-Alain. , et al. Piet Mondrian. New York: Bulfinch Press, 1994.
Champa, Kermit Swiler. Mondrian Studies. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Kimmelman, Michael. "The Joy, Jazz and Delicacy Under Those Mondrian Grids." New York
Times 29 September 1995, sec. B, p. 1.
Milner, John. Mondrian. New York: Abbeville Press, 1992.
Schapiro, Meyer. Mondrian- On the Humanity of Abstract Painting. New York: George
Braziller, 1995.
