Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/visual-arts-film-studies/1586873-mondrians-mathematical-principles-art
https://studentshare.org/visual-arts-film-studies/1586873-mondrians-mathematical-principles-art.
Mondrian’s Mathematical Principles of Art Mondrian’s Mathematical Principles of Art Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) is a modern Dutch artist. Initially his paintings were mainly landscapes but later on he adopted an abstract style. He decided to eliminate emotion from art. Following the First World War Mondrian said “Nature is a damned wretched affair” (Strickland and Boswell 2007, 145) and after that he took it upon himself to come up with a precise and mechanical order that he thought lacked in the real world.
His paintings are known for being made out of black lines, horizontal and vertical. His belief matched with that of Leonardo Da Vinci regarding a close connection between mathematics and art. Mondrian employed the very simple geometrical shapes and primary colors for expressing reality, nature and logic. His perspective of viewing things was different. He considered that it is possible to construct any kind of shape as long as there is a basic geometric one. Same is the case with colors; any color can be made by a combination of two or more of the primary colors, red, blue and yellow.
A very common element of Mondrian’s art is the Golden Rectangle. This comes under the basic shapes and it has been used repeatedly by Mondrian in his artwork. The following compositions were created using the primary colors and both contain several golden rectangles. The first one was painted in 1942 and the second, right one in 1926 (Mondrian 1937–42).Basically, through his work Mondrian wanted “to achieve harmony through the balance of the relationships between lines, colors and planes.
But only in the clearest and strongest way” (Ruhrberg, et al. 2000, 170).BibliographyMondrian, Piet. Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red. London.Ruhrberg, Karl, Klaus Honnef, Christiane Fricke, Manfred Schneckenburger, and Ingo F. Walther. Art of the 20th century, Part 1. Taschen, 2000.Strickland, Carol, and John Boswell. The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern. Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2007.
Read More