Bomen langs het Gein 1908
The exhibition on Theo van Doesburg and the avant garde in Leyden shows many works of his onetime friend Piet Mondriaan. Mondriaan is the most important modern painter of Holland. He is well known because of his modern abstract works but he started his career as a typical Dutch classical painter. What is interesting about Mondriaan is his clearly visible development from a figurative to an abstract painter. Determined to become an artist he started his career with a bypass by studying for decent teaching diploma' s in drawing. Most likely to please his father, who was headmaster of a protestant school and did not appreciate his artistic ambitions. At that time he was already painting. With his diploma's he earned a scholarship and followed a classical Dutch painting education at the State Academy in Amsterdam and finally became a beginning (poor) painter. He painted in the dominant Dutch style of that time (the Hague School and Amsterdam School). It was the time Breitner was at the peak of his career. Mondriaan earned a (meagre) living with painting traditional portraits of neat young ladies and teaching drawing (to neat young ladies too).
Mondriaan twice failed the entrance exams for the Prix de Rome of the State Academy because of his poor performance of the human anatomy/figure. After this disappointment he predominantly painted landscapes. And it is mainly through his landscapes that he developed his feeling for space, shape and colour which is so striking in his later work. Until 1909 he painted at least 400 landscapes. Often he made series of paintings of the same subject like the trees along the river Gein, specific windmills or farmhouses. From 1908 on his exercises with space, shapes and colours became more manifest. His windmill in sunlight (see left) is the first step to leave the traditional brownish en green colours behind him to replace it with red, yellow and blue. It caused a shock among the art critics. It is a strong and daring painting and years ago I made a copy of it. Another example is Trees along the river Gein (see above).