Mondrian, Piet (1872-1944)
Windmill
c.1917
Oil on canvas, 100.33 × 95.25 cm
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas
Even in his own lifetime, Piet Mondrian was lauded as the founder of the most modern, avant-garde art movement of the 20th century. Nevertheless, before he developed Neo-Plasticism, in which pictorial elements are reduced to a black grid on a white ground with contained fields of primary colors, he enjoyed a successful career as a figurative painter. In 1917 he began a series of works depicting an old windmill near his home on the outskirts of Amsterdam. Seen from a low, close vantage point, the motif was a constant through which Mondrian explored dramatic color and lighting effects. In Windmill, the expressive application of cool blue tones in broad, visible brushstrokes reveals his absorption of avant-garde styles like Symbolism and Post-Impressionism, which he had seen in Paris before the outbreak of World War I. (DMA)
Compare:
Mondrian, Piet (1872-1944)
The Winkel Mill, Pointillist Version
1908
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas
See also:
• Amsterdam (Netherlands)