Piet Mondrian. Scritti teorici

An indispensable document for understanding the thought and work of one of the greatest masters of the 20th century.

In October 1917 Piet Mondrian (Amersfoort, Holland 1872 – New York 1944) published his first article in the magazine “De Stijl” in which he defined his vision of the world and art, clarifying the ideals of the trend he founded, Neoplasticism. The purpose of life and of the new painting, he writes, is to abolish the tragic. Some thirty years earlier another Dutch artist, Van Gogh, had brought the tragic to the heart of modern art.

Now, almost as a counterpoise, Mondrian aspires to an art free from pain. To do this, he creates a language, based solely on geometry and straight lines, that breaks away from nature and the self and captures the structures of being. This volume, with an introduction by Elena Pontiggia, collects the most important and revealing writings of the father of neoplasticism, presented in a new translation. Published between 1917 and the early 1920s, the texts are an indispensable document for understanding the thought and work of one of the greatest masters of the 20th century.

BY
Elena Pontiggia – Lecturer at the Brera Academy, she has published several essays, including the Italian edition of the writings of Kandinsky, Marc, Klee, the biographies of Sironi (2015) and Martini (2017). With Modernity and Classicality (2008) he won the Carducci Prize.