Mondrian / De Stijl at the Centre Pompidou
Opening today this new exhibition links the career of one of the greatest abstract painters of the 20th century to the story of one of the most fertile art movements of European modernism. Between the end of the first decade of the century and the close of the Twenties the avant-garde movement De Stijl (Style) elaborated a vision of both art and society that aspired to universality, nourishing the ambition for a ‘total art’. It was in Paris, between 1912 and 1938, that Piet Mondrian, the central figure of the movement and its most famous representative, pursued his quest for visual harmony. Seeking a universal language of forms and primary colours, his radical abstraction sought to go beyond painting. This is the first time since 1969 that a large-scale exhibition of Mondrian’s work has been staged in the city where most of it was indeed produced.
Until 21 March 2011.
Centre Pompidou, rue Beaubourg, 4th. www.centrepompidou.fr/
Theo van Doesburg, Cornelis van Eesteren, Reconstitution de la maquette de la Maison d’artiste, 1982 La Haye, Gemeentemuseum. Courtesy © 2010 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust c/o HCR International Virginia USA
