How to revive the history of art Mondrian, giant of modern abstraction, lived in Paris 13 years in the same workshop, a tiny Kingdom of a push to the extreme aesthetic. The building in which he lived, located 26, initially Street was razed during the erection of the new neighbourhood of the station.
You can read the descriptive text of Michel Seuphor: "the new workshop of Mondrian is the third, it has a large window on the street of the departure, oriented to the East, and a high canopy South-West overlooking the voice tracks of the gare Montparnasse.". ... It was a fairly large room, very clear and very high ceiling, that Mondrian had irregularly divided, using to this end a large cupboard painted in black, itself partially masked by a bridge out of use covered with large red, grey and white boxes (1). "Better yet, the photographer André Kertész conducted in 1926 several shots that immortalized the place.
A difficult art
But can also be en ce moment visit workshop reconstituted at the Centre Pompidou for the retrospective devoted to the artist. Frans Postma Dutch art historian has redesigned full-size this application of the idea of total art devised by Mondrian. The moving experience is her only visit.
More substantially, the Pompidou Centre also presents a hundred of works by the artist to explain its evolution from a register of figurative scenes that are reminiscent of Munch up to a total abstraction. The speech is complemented by an exhibition on the avant-garde movement Dutch "of Stijl", piloted by Mondrian and his friend Theo Van Doesburg (which published between 1917 and 1928 a review under this name). Driven by a quest for universality, they also create architecture and interiors.
The two exhibitions is colossal and the retrospective Mondrian have widely enough to satisfied visitors. Especially since, as the curator of the exhibition Mondrian, Brigitte Léal advises: "Need to spend time before the tables to understand." It is a difficult art. "There is not in Mondrian to bloodshed lyric as one can find it in Kandinsky, for example.
In 2002, the Museum of Orsay had organized a remarkable exhibition on the beginnings of Mondrian, until 1914, "Mondrian, the paths of abstraction". Here are his first pictorial essays. Mondrian knows draw. It runs for example in the charcoal, in 1912, a naked woman lying. Is competent and outstanding modernity. It is from his studies of trees it will evolve towards abstraction. A set of vertical and horizontal lines that are not yet straight. "The grey tree" (1913) is composed of a declination of spaces in colour from black to white with a darker central space: the trunk. Forms diluent.
The same year, the poet friend of the painters of the avant-garde, Apollinaire, note the paintings of Mondrian, what he calls "sensitive cérébralité. It's just. The painter is a mystic. It is under the influence of Theosophy, a philosophy which argues that all religions contain a kernel of truth in their quest for the divine. This research will be in his paintings. Mondrian wants to invent a new absolute aesthetic "neo-plasticisme", a theory is published in France in 1920. Almost unreadable because almost illuminated. The artist wants to get rid of the weight of the figuration. Sometimes after futuristic, Dadaist, Cubists and other revolutionary statements manifests.
Rhythms and black lines
His paintings are made of geometric shapes and colours arranged in a search for harmony on the canvas. Can attach to enjoy, to some real details. First, think of rhythms. "Mondrian painted music" says Brigitte Léal. The colors are like musical notes.
Then, follow the black lines that draw the contours of the compositions. It recognizes cross. One of the churches of Holland of Mondrian's mystique. One can also see a reference to the stained glass Windows. Sometimes that Mondrian works paintings in an idea of transparency found in matter of stained glass.
The painter finds his manifesto by: "A new art was born." Ninety years later, the art of Mondrian still terribly new.
Judith Benhamou-Huet blog on http: //blogs.lesechos.fr//blogs.lesechos.fr
The exhibition in images on lesechos.fr/diaporamalesechos.fr/diaporama
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