Stu Stu Modrian

Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue and Black

At the Gemeente Museum, walking distance from our apartment, they have the largest collection of the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872- 1944) in the world; 169 paintings. I knew the iconic primary coloured rectangles and black vertical and horizontal lines of this artist probably from the L’Oreal Studio Line TV ads see youtube for the extreme styling range.

“Stu Stu Studioline from L’Oreal. Studioline gives volume...Stu Stu Studioline. Spritz. Lift it. Freeze it. Spray, fix... the movement. (Ridiculous saxophone solo) ♪♫♬♩Sculpt your hair...anyway you like it ... Studioline”.

The LOOK cycling company has a Mondrian inspired logo. La Vie Claire, a professional road cycling team from the 1980’s, wore a red, yellow, blue and grey jersey designed by Benetton but based on Mondrian. Yves Saint Laurent designed Mondrian dresses for a 1965 collection; in 2007 Silverchair had an album ‘Young Modern’ with Mondrian inspired cover art and in 2008 Nike released some Nike Dunk SB Piet Mondrian’s (skateboarding shoes).

Cover of Young Modern

Many of the Piet Mondrian works at the Gemeente Museum date from the artist’s early career, his progress through different styles was more rapid than trends in hairstyles. Mondrian lived in Holland, then Paris, then Holland, then London, then New York where he died. I enjoyed his Post-Impressionists influenced paintings. These vividly coloured works, reminiscent of Van Gogh are from his Luminist period- ‘Woods Near Oele’ (1908) with a golden sphere of sun behind blue and purple vertical trees; and ‘Dying Chrysanthemum’ (1908) with mauve petals dropping from the creamy centre and dark ‘Dying Sunflower’ that looks like a exhausted human eye, it’s stem can barely hold. I also love his windmill and lighthouse paintings which are blazes of vivid colour. ‘Mill in Sunlight’ (1908) in mainly red, yellow and blue, ‘Lighthouse in West Kapelle’ (1907), and the red on blue ‘Red Windmill’ (1911) hint of things to come with their tendency to be limited to primary colours.

Mill in Sunlight

Red Windmill

Lighthouse in West Kapelle

The Gemeente Museum has some of his grey cubist works but then Mondrian decided to refine cubism further to pure abstraction. In 1917 Mondrian and three other painters founded the art movement of “De Stijl, ” Dutch for "The Style" and also known as “Neoplasticism”. They rejected reality in their paintings and simplified their art to pure abstraction, to the basic elements of the straight line, primary colours and noncolours black white and grey. So we see white backgrounds, black vertical and horizontal lines and squares and rectangles of blue, red and yellow. The Gemeente Museum has about 20 of these iconic Mondrian works. I find his earlier works more powerful but these De Stijl paintings for which he is most famous are appealing and the catchy motifs continue to influence fashion and design. The Gemeente Museum even has his final unfinished work ‘Victory Boogie Woogie’ (1944).

Image by Bart van Damme via Flickr

Victory Boogie Woogie