Mondrian's path

Among the abstract painters he is one of the most famous and his paintings are recognizable at first sight: Piet Mondrian, born in Holland in 1872.

The images of his most famous and most published paintings are those of the last period, that is those created with thick perpendicular lines and black with squares filled only with the three primary colors yellow, red and blue.

There is no need to repeat the usual sample of sarcastic or reductive comments about his abilities.

Mondrian knew how to draw very well: a precise and interesting stroke like the chrysanthemum that you can see in the photos of the post.

He knew how to paint as the academy commands, and even here it is enough to see some of his first paintings.

Having these skills could easily guarantee him appreciation and sales without any controversy.

But Piet Mondrian was a sincere artist, a researcher, wanted to go further and it was not enough for him to win easy by stopping in the first comfortable town: he wanted to go further and started walking again.

The images in sequence show his desire to discover, starting from a real datum such as a tree, the intimate "mathematical" order that is hidden in nature.

On the other hand, millennia earlier, even the Pythagoreans declared that "everything is number".

And so, step by step, Piet Mondrian tried to get to the essential even in colors by using only primary colors without shades or light and dark tones.

He wrote: "I want to get as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from it, until I reach the foundations (even if only the external foundations!) Of things"

And his continuous research led him to images that could represent the "constant motif" from which they arise, then all the particular forms.

A pneumonia, in 1944, interrupts his research, which was evolving towards new shapes made of small squares of color juxtaposed as in a mosaic without black lines to mark the rhythm.

Perhaps his journey continues, who knows where, towards a world of balance, perfection and synthesis that his soul could not help but express as best it could.

Andrea Giuseppe Fadini