5 Paintings by Piet Mondrian You Wouldn’t Believe Were His

Piet Mondrian, Still Life with Ginger Jar I, 1911-1912, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Hague, Netherlands. Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Piet Mondrian, one of the founders of the Dutch modern movement De Stijl, is mostly known for his pure abstractions from the 1920s, reduced to lines, rectangles, and primary colors. You know what I mean, the not-very-surprising Mondrian paintings:

However, before Piet Mondrian came to this he was trying to find his way. He tried various styles of painting. A turning point in his career was in 1911 when he arrived in Paris from the Netherlands. He started to experiment with Cubism and integrated himself into the Parisian Avant-garde. At one point he removed an “a” from the Dutch spelling of his name (Mondriaan). That led him to his abstract ideas.

Cubism sounds close when you think about DeStijl and Neoplasticism, but Symbolism? Post-impressionism? Here you will find five surprising Mondrian paintings from the collection of Kunstmuseum Den Haag which is filled with works from his early period that you wouldn’t expect!

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