Piet Mondrian

De Stijl pioneer Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) transformed modern art through his rigorous pursuit of pure abstraction. Born in Amersfoort, Netherlands, he trained at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam before moving through Impressionism, Symbolism, and Cubism toward his signature style. In 1917, he cofounded De Stijl with Theo van Doesburg, developing what he called Neoplasticism, a form limited to primary colors, black, white, and gray arranged in horizontal and vertical lines.

Mondrian believed this reduction to essentials could express universal beauty and spiritual harmony. His iconic grid paintings, with their asymmetrical arrangements of colored rectangles, influenced not just art but architecture, design, and fashion throughout the 20th century. Fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe, he spent his final years in New York, where jazz inspired looser works like Broadway Boogie-Woogie (1942-43). Today the Museum of Modern Art in New York holds major works, while the Kunstmuseum Den Haag maintains the world's largest Mondrian collection. The Kröller-Müller Museum also preserves significant pieces from his evolution toward abstraction.