Piet Mondrian for kids

Piet Mondrian

INFORMATION ABOUT HIS LIFE.

• Piet Mondrian was born the 7th of March 1872 in Amersfoort (Netherlands) and died the 1st of February 1944 in New York (U.S.A).

• He was the second of his parent's children. At a very young age his father Pieter and his Uncle Fritz, both artists themselves, introduced Piet to the world of art.

• He was a very important painter of modern abstract art in the 20th century.

Piet Mondrian began as an artist by painting realistic landscapes.

He painted the world he saw around him.

THE FIRST DECADE OF THE 20TH CENTURY

• Piet Mondrian developed a modern abstract art movement known as De Stijl (“The Style”). He used the simplest combinations of straight lines, right angles, primary colours, and black, white, and gray.

•Piet Mondrian discovered the Cubism in 1911 and started to use geometrical shapes in most of his paintings . In 1912 he went to Paris and he saw exhibits from Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and he was interested in the styles they followed.

The gray tree • The Gray Tree is one of the first paintings in which Mondrian applied to a natural subject the principles of cubist.

• Piet changed the way he painted.

•He didn’t want his pictures to look like nature.

•He wanted to explore how color and line worked together.

•Over time, Piet’s work became more simple.

•Piet did not use details and he only used a few colors.

•Can you guess which colors he liked to use the most?

I hope you guessed the primary colors!

Red Yellow Blue

For 20 years Piet used only black, white, grey and the three primary colors.

Besides using just the primary colors, Piet liked to use:

horizontal

&

vertical lines in his art.

Sometimes he would change the thickness

of the lines. Other times he

would place the lines close

together or far apart.

He was always trying to find a perfect balance in his art.

When Piet was 68 years old, he moved to New York City.

The skyscrapers and the straight lines of the streets must have reminded him of his paintings!

Here are some more paintings by Piet Mondrian

LET’S WATCH SOME VIDEOS

• Information about his life:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fmiKOOvLUo

• Let’s have a look to his paintings:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fmiKOOvLUo

• How to make your own Mondrian painting:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFvCHdVv-6Y