Colored polygons, coordinated according to the master’s perceived routine, make up his “Composition with red, yellow and blue”. The polygons are separated from each other by straight black lines, the “coloring” itself has the character of a fill in the drawing, thus dismissing any artist’s personality in the picture. This is underlined by the absence of the name of the canvas as such. It is noteworthy that his works differed from each other only in numbering.
The search for the proportion and balance of geometric figures in “primary” colors soon found its direct practical application in architecture and everyday life; in the beginning of the century, applied art was involved in the arrangement of color planes. Neoplasticism, or rectangular painting, the foundations of which were laid and theoretically substantiated by Mondrian, has become very widespread. So, in 1917, the magazine De Stiyl was created, which developed under the leadership of Mondrian himself and prominent Dutch architects who preached the ideas of a new trend in art. The magazine has been published for 14 years, during which time neoplasticism has become an independent, widely known and generally accepted area.
As a matter of fact, it was the magazine that was intended to convey to a wide range of people interested in painting the ideas of Mondrian. In general, his painting is not so much a paradoxical trend in art as a whole worldview. Simplification and depersonalization, cultivated by Mondrian, must, according to the principle of absolute harmony, rebuild this world, leading it in an illusory way from contradictions.
Mondrian himself said that the sensual world only condemns humanity to endless suffering, in which each person is locked in because of the prevalence of subjectivity and the inconsistency of his nature over pure thinking. People are doomed to suffer until they can look differently at the world around and within themselves, rejecting external materiality. Civilization, according to Mondrian, helps a person to abstract from the “natural form”, to see the true, to shift the material shell to the democratic organization of society. The new art is designed to help people restructure – to learn to see the highest forms of relationship with the world.
In 1926, Mondrian formulated 5 basic instructions for neoplastic artists, on which they should rely in their work. In fact, these are the 5 commandments of the New Life religion, which was preached throughout life by Mondrian. The rejection of the sensual, the mathematical replacement of all kinds of emotional and subjective, had to transform the imperfect world and save it from suffering.
In 1938, Mondrian arrives in London, but the two-year labor was destroyed during one of the fascist bombings. After moving to New York, he begins to feel the pulse of a completely different rhythm of life. Boogie-woogie, broadway, jungle – all this is reflected in the abstract geometry of the master.
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