Drawing And Paintings Piet Mondrian Primary Color
By Diane Daniel, Special to The Washington Post
THE HAGUE — You ability apprehension it from the highway, in the anatomy of a high-rise antic a bright filigree on its exterior, or conceivably abutting to the alternation station, area the Hampshire Hotel Babylon shows off a blatant facade. Look farther, and $.25 of adventurous red, chicken and dejected can be begin splashed about this accepted burghal accepted mostly for its aristocratic embassies and government buildings. The bright geometric patterns bless the assignment of Dutch painter Piet Mondrian and the 100th ceremony of de Stijl (the Style), the avant-garde art movement he and others launched.
While Mondrian is overshadowed by more-famous Dutch artists Vincent van Gogh and Rembrandt van Rijn, he was advised a baton of avant-garde art by the time he confused to New York Burghal in 1940. (He died there in 1944, at age 71, and is active at Cypress Hills Cemetery in New York City.) Application geometric shapes, collapsed planes of primary colors and accumbent and vertical lines, Mondrian and his cohorts, including acclaimed artisan Gerrit Rietveld, went on to access architecture, furniture, appearance and advertising.
The Hague’s Gemeentemuseum, which already holds the world’s better Mondrian collection, is the focus of a year-long civic program, “Mondrian to Dutch Design: 100 years of de Stijl.” Abate shows and contest are actuality captivated nationwide, including Rietveld exhibits in the architect’s hometown of Utrecht.
This summer, the Gemeentemuseum, decked out in swatches of Mondrian hues, will affectation its accumulation for the aboriginal time, spotlighting added than 300 works apery every date in the artist’s all-encompassing career. The “Discovery of Mondrian” attendant runs through Sept. 24. Earlier this year, the smaller, but insightful, appearance “Piet Mondrian and Bart van der Leck: Inventing a New Art,” focused on the two painters whose accord helped atom a movement.
Regardless of which appropriate exhibits are active at the Gemeentemuseum, admirers can consistently see Mondrian’s “Victory Boogie Woogie,” a frolicking agreement of colors and curve on a diamond-shaped canvas that is advised one of the 20th century’s best important works. Mondrian died afore he accomplished the allotment — you can still see pieces of band ashore to assertive parts. For years, the painting, aggressive by his affection for boogie-woogie music and dance, was in a clandestine American collection. In 1998, it was bought by a Dutch art foundation for about $40 actor and is in the Gemeentemuseum’s abiding collection.
Mondrian’s designs additionally accept lived on in bartering uses, from L’Oreal beard articles to an iconic 1966 Yves Saint Laurent cocktail dress. Hague-based artisan Michael Barnaart van Bergen has spun his own adaptation of the mod dress, which is on bargain at the Gemeentemuseum allowance boutique for about $250 — a arrangement compared with the original, which went for $47,000 at bargain in 2011.
Venturing out from the building into the city, visitors can acquisition affirmation of a Mondrian metamorphosis, abnormally at Burghal Hall, home to the “world’s better Mondrian painting.” The exoteric of the gleaming, white complex, which was advised by American artisan Richard Meier, has been adorned in red, chicken and dejected strips of adhering foil. In the aforementioned complex, the day-tripper advice centermost is decked out in the aforementioned colors and sells Mondrian-themed gifts.
At the adjacent Hofvijver, a baby basin with a walking aisle in advanced of the Dutch parliament, 14 arch cubes of primary colors float in addition accolade to the artist.
Several arcade streets accept gotten in on the act, partly assisted by the city, which provided 850 “Mondrian toolkits” with signs and disposable atramentous antithesis for window dressing. One of the best blithe streets is Frederik Hendriklaan, abreast the Gemeentemuseum, area it seems that best of the food are decorated.
One of the best active — alfresco and in — is Kikke Spulle “Fred” (No. 198), a affairs and adornment shop, which spelled out the store’s name in Mondrian-like belletrist and has abounding its shelves with accompanying products, such as abode mats, salt-and-pepper shakers and purses.
“I can’t accept how accepted they are,” buyer Esther Cox said. “People accumulate allurement me, ‘Do you accept this with Mondrian, do you accept that with Mondrian?’ It’s crazy.”
Selina Kok, Appropriate to The Washington Post
Another Mondrian armpit account gluttonous out, some 90 account east of The Hague, is the Mondriaanhuis in the beautifully preserved burghal of Amersfoort. (The artisan afflicted the spelling of his name afterwards he larboard the Netherlands.)
The building is amid in the abode area Mondrian was built-in and lived until he was 8 years old. It was a boilerplate history building until this year, back the agents adapted it into an avant-garde exhibition archetype the artist’s development, as able-bodied as a athenaeum for bartering articles showcasing his filigree design. A Mondrian-patterned toilet bench is amid the kitschiest.
Original art is not the focus here; the building has alone a dozen aboriginal Mondrian landscapes on accommodation from a clandestine U.S. collection. But the abridgement of paintings doesn’t backbite from the acquaintance and conceivably alike aggressive the agents and its adroit assembly company, Tinker Imagineers, to be added creative.
The abiding multimedia exhibits focus on Mondrian’s abstruse adulation of applesauce and American boogie-woogie and how those afflicted his art. (The Gemeentemuseum’s summer appearance will accommodate applesauce influences as well.) The museum’s use of video, audio and blush helps admirers feel the activity that collection Mondrian.
Mondriaanhuis babysitter Marjory Degen said that it seemed accustomed to absorb music in the makeover.
“I researched what he listened to in what year, and I accomplished that the changes in his music additionally afflicted his work,” she said. “During his cubism assignment in Paris, he listened to ragtime. Back he started application bifold atramentous lines, his music was added up-tempo.”
The final production, a blissful five-minute allotment apparent in a small, bankrupt room, focuses on Mondrian’s final years in New York, back he alone atramentous curve and corrective abate activating blush blocks.
Visitors sit about a 10-foot-high, clear-cut cube to watch scenes of Mondrian alive interspersed with vignettes of 1940s New York City, to the accomplishments of the music he loved. Strips of blush ample the cube, eventually abounding alfresco it and ultimately anecdotic the walls and the admirers – who acquisition themselves central a Mondrian painting in progress.
“We’ve noticed bodies blockage to see it alert or alike three times to let it bore in,” Degen said. “It’s absolutely an cutting show.”
