Mondrian Art Quotes & Sayings

Art is the path to being spiritual. — Piet Mondrian

The unconscious in us warns us that in art we have to followoneparticular path. And if wefollow it, it isnotthe sign of anunconscious act.On the contrary, it showsthat there is in our ordinary consciousness a greater awareness of our unconsciousness. — Piet Mondrian

To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual. — Piet Mondrian

It is a task of art to express clear vision of reality. — Piet Mondrian

As tradition, the female element clings to the old art and opposes anything new - precisely because each new art moves further away from the natural appearance of things. — Piet Mondrian

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.
Piet Mondrian
The Artist's Way A Spiritual Path to Greater Creativity by Julia Cameron — Piet Mondrian

In art the search for a content which is collectively understandable is false; the content will always be individual. — Piet Mondrian

Art is not made for anybody and is, at the same time, for everybody. — Piet Mondrian

I wish to approach truth as closely as is possible, and therefore I abstract everything until I arrive at the fundamental quality of objects. — Piet Mondrian

Abstract art is not the creation of another reality but the true vision of reality. — Piet Mondrian

The mind itself is an art object. It is a Mondrian canvas onto whose homemade grids it fits its own preselected products. Our knowledge is contextual and only contextual. Ordering and invention coincide: we call their collaboration knowledge. — Annie Dillard

The truly modern artist is aware of abstraction in an emotion of beauty. — Piet Mondrian

Experience was my only teacher; I knew little of the modern art movement. When I first saw the works of the Impressionists, van Gogh, van Dongen, and Fauves, I admired it. But I had to seek the true way alone. — Piet Mondrian

I like nature but not its substitutes ... Mondrian opposed art to nature saying that art is artificial and nature is natural. I do not share this opinion ... Art's origins are natural. — Hans Arp

Art on the contrary sought this harmony in practice (of art itself). More and more in its creations it has given inwardness to that what surrounds us in nature, until, in Neo-Plasticism, nature is no longer dominant. This achievement of balance may prepare the way for the fulfilment of man and signal the end of (what we call) art. (1921/23 — Piet Mondrian

If the paying public demands naturalistic art, then an artist can use his skills to produce such pictures - but these are to be clearly distinguished from the artist's own art. — Piet Mondrian

It has become progressively clearer that the plastic expression of true reality is attained through dynamic movement in equilibrium. Plastic art affirms that equilibrium can only be established through the balance of unequal but equivalent oppositions. — Piet Mondrian

The purer the artist's 'mirror' is, the more true reality reflects in it. Overseeing the historical culture of art, we must conclude that the mirror only slowly is purified. Time producing this purifying shows a gradual, more constant and objective image of reality. — Piet Mondrian

Let us note that art - even on an abstract level - has never been confined to 'idea'; art has always been the 'realized' expression of equilibrium. — Piet Mondrian

I think that the destructive element is too much neglected in art. — Piet Mondrian

All painting - the painting of the past as well as of the present - shows us that its essential plastic means were only line and color. — Piet Mondrian

The subjectivization of the universal in art brings the universal downward on one hand, while on the other it helps raise the individual toward the universal. — Piet Mondrian

Think about it: you've already related it down to something that somebody else can understand. If art relates to something - it's like Picasso, it's like Mondrian - it's not. Art's supposed to be what it is. Using a reference of art history might help for some kind of sales, but it doesn't really help anybody. Art is what it is; it cannot be footnoted, until it enters the world. Then it has a history. Then the footnotes are the history, not the explanation. — Lawrence Weiner

The only problem in art is to achieve a balance between subjective and objective. — Piet Mondrian

Why should art continue to follow nature when every other field has left nature behind? — Piet Mondrian

If you follow nature you will not be able to vanquish the tragic in any real degree in your art ... We must free ourselves from our attachment to the external, for only then do we transcend the tragic, and are enabled consciously to contemplate the repose which is within all things. — Piet Mondrian

The clarification of equilibrium through plastic art is of great importance for humanity. It reveals that although human life in time is doomed to disequilibrium, notwithstanding this, it is based on equilibrium. It demonstrates that equilibrium can become more and more living in us. — Piet Mondrian

I think you too recognize the important relationship between philosophy and art, and it is just this relationship that most painters deny. The great masters do grasp it, unconsciously; but I believe that a painter's conscious spiritual knowledge will have a much greater influence upon his art, and that it would be due only to a weakness in him, or lack of genius, should this spiritual knowledge be harmful to his art ... — Piet Mondrian

One can rightly speak of an evolution in plastic art. It is of the greatest importance to note this fact, for it reveals the true way of art - the only path along which we can advance. — Piet Mondrian

Non-figurative art is created by establishing a dynamic rhythm of determinate mutual relations which excludes the formation of any particular form. — Piet Mondrian

No painting is more replete than Mondrian's. — Samuel Beckett

If the universal is the essential, then it is the basis of all life and art. Recognizing and uniting with the universal therefore gives us the greatest aesthetic satisfaction, the greatest emotion of beauty. — Piet Mondrian

It is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true. — Piet Mondrian

Just as pure abstract art is not dogmatic, neither is it decorative. — Piet Mondrian

Dance, theatre, etc. as art, will disappear along with the dominating 'expression' of tragedy and harmony: the movement of life itself will become harmonious. — Piet Mondrian

As I see it, all of them - Tachists, Action Painters, Informel artists, and the rest - are only part of an Informel movement that covers a lot of other things as well. I think there's an Informel element in Beuys, as well; but it all began with Duchamp and chance, or with Mondrian, or with the Impressionists. The Informel is the opposite of the constructional quality of classicism - the age of kings, or clearly formed hierarchies. — Gerhard Richter

The autonomy of art that emerged through Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Mondrian, and the Russian Constructivism had seen painting develop independent of imitations or decoration, and so the content of art became much closer to that of music. — Neville Weston