Piet Mondrians Work and His Insistence on Primary Colors Essay

Piet Mondrians Work and His Insistence on Primary Colors - Essay Example While Composition clearly exhibits a strong amount of originality, (Form and Organization) Mondrian is guided by a set of principles that he and fellow De Stijl founders outlined. One can see how all these tenants are evident in Composition. All colours are, â€Å"primary colours as this gives the painting a more stripped-down and pure feel† (Art Book, p. 120). The rectangular planes and prisms are evident in the picture as seems to avoid characteristic types of symmetry, instead opting for abstract positioning of figures that still retain a functional appeal to the human senses. The aesthetic balance in the picture is achieved through opposition; nowhere do we see two of the same colours connected. (Artist Intent) While Mondrian has been derided as an intellectual artist, too concerned with formalist principals, his actual intentions were much more organic. In Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art Mondrian wrote, â€Å"... this new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and colour. On the contrary, it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and colour, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary colour† (De Stijl). (Expert) Since Mondrian’s style is â€Å"non-representational and linked to a spiritual element in his life†, it seems the theoretical underpinnings of neo-plasticism and Mondrian’s own theosophical beliefs are evident in Composition (Deicher, p. ix). (Personal Reaction) Upon viewing Mondrian’s earlier experimental work where colours do, in fact, stand next to each other, it’s clear why he later chose to disregard such placements, as they take away from the beauty of the work. The viewer is immediately struck by the sparseness of designs and the purity of forms. It’s easy to imagine how Mondrian’s pure geometric shapes share much with the idealized Platonic forms, where the pure essential nature of the object exists in direct relation to the soul and the universe.  Ã‚