Mondrian

Composition with Red, Blue & Yellow by Piet Mondrian (1930)

45 cm x 45 cm (about 17.7 in × 17.7 in)

De Stijl

There is an old and a new consciousness of time. The old is connected with the individual. The new is connected with the universal. The struggle of the individual against the universal is revealing itself in the world-war as well as in the art of the present day.
Theo van Doesburg, Manifesto I of Style, 1918

These are the first words of the first manifesto of a new movement within art history known as de Stijl, written while World War I was still raging. Many groups of European artists reacted to this global apocalypse by developing art philosophies that were socialist-utopianist in thought. De Stijl was the Dutch version. De Stijl’s basic idea was to follow in the footsteps of the War by destroying the traditions that allowed it (the war) to happen, and to create a new art that united Mankind using its most basic and universal elements. De Stijl removed symbolism and meaning that only spoke to a few and replaced it with the symbolism of the human collective.

De Stijl is absolute abstraction — a total elimination of natural imagery. Artists reduced art to basic shapes, colors, and values. They would reject the abstract label, however. De-Stijl-ists would have said that there is nothing more natural than these universal elements. These are the most real because everyone knows them and recognizes them for what they are. Every culture throughout time understood color, line, dark and light, et cetera. They unify humanity like no imagery can because they stimulate the universal human trait — emotions.

For me, I think proportion and composition are the most important elements in Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow. Mondrian took the most fundamental colors and forms and tried to find a perfect balance between them. He used the primary colors: red, blue and yellow, simple black and white, and basic geometric shapes. Only vertical and horizontal lines are used. From these fundamentals all the other elements of style are created; these are the atoms of artistic creation. From these, total and perfect logic are supposed to be achieved.

The colors are pure. Red is the most vivid and visual “heavy”. Yellow is the brightest but has the least weight. Blue is heavy and vivid and bright. Blue and red offset each other’s vividness, but because blue has the most of all three traits it must be smaller than red for balance. Yellow must be even smaller because even though it is very light, it is also very bright. If it were any bigger, its brightness would be too distracting.

One way to see what I described above is to convert the picture to gray-tones…

Notice how the blue area is darker than the red. Because the blue/gray is closer in value to black than the red/gray, it feels heavier to me. Yellow, because it is so light, disappears entirely. Now forget the colors entirely. Something interesting happens when this work is just grey. Mondrian’s arrangement doesn’t work anymore. The missing anchor in the lower right (where yellow would be) throws off the balance of the entire piece. In my opinion, the painting leans left and threatens to tip over. This grayscale image really highlights how important that small square of yellow really is and how the three primary colors work together.

Switching back to the colorful original…

White should be thought of as the background upon which everything else rests. The black lines break up this blankness into clean squares into which the colors sit. Eliminate one black line, or make them thinner than they are, and the white suddenly dominates. The lines also form a grid upon which everything is logically arranged, tying everything together.

De Stijl was not just an art style, it was a way of life. De Stijl was to infuse art, design and architecture through the logical arrangements of basic, universal elements. The idea was to surround yourself with objects so perfectly balanced and harmonized that they would bring peace and stability to your life and mind. If enough people did this, then society itself would be at absolute peace. De Stijl was called “The Style to End All Styles” because when its goal was achieved, art would no longer be needed. What I see in Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow is Mondrian’s version of the Taoist yin/yang — the universal opposites perfectly balanced, but still energetic.

This work is cared for by the Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland.