Mondrian. Evolution

2022 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Piet Mondrian. The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is taking this as an opportunity to honor him and his art in the comprehensive exhibition Mondrian. Evolution. Many are familiar with Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) as a painter of rigid geometric compositions with black-and-white lines and fields of pure color in red, blue, or yellow. However, the fact that the Dutchman initially chose landscapes and other representational motifs during the first decades of his career and often staged these with surprising colorfulness is hardly known. On the basis of ninety works, the exhibition at K20 sheds light on Mondrian’s remarkable path from the early naturalistic paintings to the late abstract works and traces the formal connections that exist between the paintings spanning five decades.

In this process, the concept of “evolution” plays a key role. For Mondrian, evolution meant conducting experiments in an effort to reach a new artistic level. In order to illustrate this systematic progression in Mondrian’s work, visual axes are formed in the chronologically hung exhibition, which allows works from different phases to be juxtaposed with one another. For example, the Impressionist painting Lighthouse in Westkapelle (1910) hangs next to the Neoplastic work Composition in Blue and White (1936), thus visualizing the artist’s amazingly stringent development. The juxtaposition reveals that, already at a young age, Mondrian was a painter with a distant vision.

The exhibition Mondrian. Evolution is a joint project of the Fondation Beyeler and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and was created in close cooperation with the Kunstmuseum Den Haag. The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen boasts four Neoplastic works by Mondrian that their founding director Werner Schmalenbach acquired through the mediation of Ernst Beyeler: Composition with Yellow (1930), Composition with Blue and White (1936), Rhythm of Straight Lines (1937–42), purchased in the early 1960s, and the famous New York City I (1941) with a time lag in 1980.

Curators: Kathrin Beßen and Susanne Meyer-Büser for K20 K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

Digital accompanying booklet K+
The exhibition is accompanied by a digital booklet that provides multimedia insights into the individual creative phases of the artist as well as background information on the work and life of Piet Mondrian. Through QR codes at various stations within the exhibition space, K+ can be accessed via smartphone or tablet while visiting the exhibition. Visit K+: kunstsammlung.de.

Exhibition diary for children
The exhibition diary for children from the age of six guides them through the exhibition with exciting search games and artistic-creative tasks. In this way, young visitors can playfully discover the work of the artist Piet Mondrian for themselves. The exhibition diary is available free of charge at the ticket desk.

Publication: Mondrian. Evolution
Edited by Susanne Gaensheimer, Kathrin Beßen, and Susanne Meyer-Büser, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, together with Sam Keller and Ulf Küster, Fondation Beyeler. With essays by Kathrin Beßen, Ulf Küster, Susanne Meyer-Büser, Charlotte Sarrazin, Bridget Riley, Benno Temple, and Caro Verbeek. German and English edition, Hatje Cantz Verlag. 264 pages, 44 euros

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