Piet Mondrian - Painting Quotes

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This year I have worked hard, and done much searching. A great deal of the old [way of painting] was due for a change. I was searching for a purer representation, which is why I wasn't satisfied with anything... The large black and white one ['Composition in line', 1917] has also been totally reworked, which I now regret; it would have been better to leave it as it was, and make a new one. But when one is searching, one does not now in advance just how to go about it.

Piet Mondrian
The new plastic idea thus correctly represents actual aesthetic relationships. To the modern artist, it is a natural consequence of all the plastic ideas of the past. This is particularly true for painting, which is the art least bounded to contingencies. The picture can be a pure reflection of life, in its deepest essence.

Piet Mondrian
And now about architects in general – I have to say it, Does [Theo van Doesburg], when 'De Stijl' was founded I left it up to you, but I never did agree with you when you ranked the architects alongside us, alongside our 'N. B.' (Nieuwe Beelding / Neo-Plasticism) I knew then that it would lead to conflict... I cannot write about architecture, because I'm not an architect. I mean, I cannot write about the way I write about painting. Later on, though, I will put forward a few ideas.

Piet Mondrian
Dear Does [Theo van Doesburg], thank you for your letter... I was glad to know that in principle you are in favor of the diamond hanging [Mondrian's painting, hanging in a rhombus] and I think that in practice you will approve of this method for some of my things. You look at the thing [painting] itself, and not only the outward appearance..

Piet Mondrian
The important task of all art is to destroy the static equilibrium by establishing a dynamic one. Non-figurative art demands an attempt of what is a consequence of this task, the destruction of particular form and the construction of a rhythm of mutual relations, of mutual forms, or free lines.... the law of the denaturalization of matter is of fundamental importance. In painting, the primary color that is as pure as possible realizes this abstraction of natural color

Piet Mondrian
By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting a new plastic reality will be created.

Piet Mondrian
Kandinsky points out [in his book On the Spiritual in Art] that Theosophy (in its true sense; not as it generally appears) is yet another expression of the same spiritual movement which we are now seeing in painting.

Piet Mondrian
Only now [1943] I become conscious that my work in black, white and little color planes has been merely 'drawing' in oil color. In drawing, the lines are the principal means of expressions... In painting, however, the lines are absorbed by the color planes; but the limitations of the planes show themselves as lines and conserve their great value.

Piet Mondrian
The free placement of the means of expression is a privilege enjoyed exclusively by painting. The sister arts, sculpture and architecture, are more restricted in this respect. The other arts enjoy even less scope in their employment of the means of expression..

Piet Mondrian
The essence of painting has actually always been to make it [the universal] plastically perceptible through colour and line.

Piet Mondrian
To show that this end [of art by its dissolution into real life] is only a beginning, it is essential that.... the series of galleries [of the future museum of modern art] be followed by a room in which painting and sculpture will be realized by the interior itself.... demonstrating that what is lost for art is gained for life. This room could therefore be designed for use as a lecture room, a restaurant.... as a bar with an American jazz band.

Piet Mondrian
[the double line in his paintings] is still one line, as in the case of your grooves [the wide sunken lines in the relief's, artist Gorin made that time]... In my last things the double line widens to form a plane, and yet it remains a line. Be that as it may, I believe that this question is one of those which lie beyond the realm of theory, and which are of such subtlety that they are rooted in the mystery of 'art'. But all that is not yet clear in my mind.

Piet Mondrian
On his two paintings 'Sea' and 'Trees':
If the masculine is the vertical line, then a man will recognize this element in the rising line of a forest; in the horizontal lines of the sea he will see his complement. Woman, with the horizontal line as element, sees herself in the recumbent lines of the sea, and her complement in the vertical lines of the forest.

Piet Mondrian