Mondrian: Neo-Plasticim

Piet Mondrian - Composition No. III Blanc-Jaune - 1935-42 - Oil on canvas - 101 x 51 cm - Christie’s, New York (click photo for larger image)Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) founded named the movement Neo-Plasticism. It’s a rigid form of Abstraction, whose rules allow only for a canvas to be sectioned into rectangles by horizontal and vertical lines, and colored using a very limited palette. He published a manifesto entitled Neo-Plasticism in 1920. Another member of the movement, painter Theo van Doesberg (Dutch, 1883-1931) started a journal named De Stijl in 1917, which continued publication until 1928, spreading the theories of the group. The labels “De Stijl” and “Neo-Plasticism" came to be synonymous.

