Mondrian

May 1, 2024

Cultural historian Weber (iBauhaus; Le Corbusier), executive director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, focuses on Piet Mondrian, the early 20th-century abstract artist who would become famous for his geometric work in primary colors. The biography covers Mondrian's childhood through to his artistic philosophy developed during both world wars. Prepub Alert.

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August 15, 2024
A deep dive into the art and times of the Dutch-born modernist painter. In this exceptionally well-crafted and researched biography, cultural historian Weber explores the intimate connection between Mondrian's austere yet exuberant paintings and his life. Born Pieter Mondriaan to a neo-Calvinist Protestant teacher and his wife, the painter became a leading light of the early-20th-century avant-garde. He both "mirrored...and reacted against" the rigidity and religious absolutism of his parents; where they taught him to hold fast to his spiritual convictions, his more worldly uncle Frits introduced him to the unabashed "pursuit of visible beauty." Frits schooled his beloved nephew in the commercially popular "Hague school" style that focused realistic natural scenes; as Mondrian grew older, he gravitated to the candid modernism of Van Gogh and, in particular, to deploying light, lines, and color in ways that created "the energy and robustness that would become Mondrian's hallmarks." As a young man, he left the Netherlands for France, where he abandoned his uncle's traditionalism and committed to a more radical aesthetic; Frits retaliated by insisting Piet drop one "a" from his last name so he would no longer be associated with his "depraved nephew." Moving among the patrons, artists, and art dealers in Paris and, later, New York who helped define the modernist era, Mondrian immersed himself in the geometric, perspectival playfulness of cubism. Near the end of the First World War, he co-founded the influential De Stijl arts movement, which emphasized the absolute rectilinear abstraction and primary color "purity" that Mondrian believed created art that transcended "the small issues of everyday life" and offered "spiritual grace." Written with a scholarly precision that revels in the nuances of Mondrian's remarkable life and work, Weber's book offers an immersive, if lengthy, biographical experience for lovers of both art history and modernism. Passionately rendered and richly detailed.

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Starred review from October 15, 2024
What impelled an artist who strived to acquire traditional skills in order to be recognized by the academy to forge a path to radical abstraction? This is one of many complex questions Weber, a consummate arts biographer, addresses in this epic biography of a ""complete original,"" Piet Mondrian. Weber thoroughly chronicles Mondrian's strict religious upbringing in the Netherlands, and his boldly philosophical rejection of repression and tradition, even as he remained committed to discipline and order. Enthralled by nature, he painted in search of its essence, seeking a "new form of spiritual beauty," a quest Weber traces through Mondrian's extensive writings as well as his paintings. Tall, fastidious, always impeccable in suit and tie, and passionate about jazz and dancing, Mondrian found liberation in Paris. He fervently pursued the immutable, while juggling crucial yet volatile relationships with friends, patrons, and acolytes, steadfastly avoiding intimacy as his paintings became ever more austere, if cosmically dynamic. Weber closely scrutinizes key works, and draws on numerous sources to track Mondrian's perpetual financial and health struggles; his fleeing WWII Paris and London for New York; and the shift in critical response from mockery to reverence. Twelve years in the making and brimming with exacting details and striking insights, Weber's vital and enlightening portrait will be the foundation for all future studies of the "jazz-loving pioneer of abstraction."

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Starred review from August 19, 2024
Art historian Weber (Anni & Josef Albers) presents a scrupulously detailed biography of pioneering Dutch abstract painter Piet Mondrian (1872–1944). Raised by austere, religious parents, Mondrian developed an interest in art thanks to an uncle who was a painter. He began dabbling in cubism in 1912, laying the groundwork for a turn toward pure abstraction that evolved into his trademark blocks of bold primary color with black lines in the late 1910s and early 1920s. That style eventually came to be known as neoplasticism, Mondrian’s theory of art that ventured beyond the “guise” of everyday objects into their purer, spiritual essences (Weber posits that Mondrian was so emotionally affected by depicting “the realm of nature and human feeling” that he had to “find a way to express the wonder of existence in a... form that did not threaten him”). Careful due is given to Mondrian’s artistic innovations; the circumstances that made his artistic career possible (including his vast network of patrons, confidantes and supporters); and his unsavory characteristics, including his antisemitism and tendency to break off friendships over small matters. Rigorously researched and impressively nuanced, this will serve as the definitive biography of one of modern art’s most important figures.