Piet Mondrian famous quotes

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Art #Humble #Artist

The emotion of beauty is always obscured by the appearance of the object. Therefore, the object must be eliminated from the picture.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Emotion #Appearance

Curves are so emotional.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Emotional #Curves #Emotion

The truly modern artist is aware of abstraction in an emotion of beauty.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Art #Emotion #Modern

Every true artist has been inspired more by the beauty of lines and color and the relationships between them than by the concrete subject of the picture.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Artist #Color #Lines

Art is not made for anybody and is, at the same time, for everybody.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Art #Made #Art Is

The more basic the color, the more inward, the more pure.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Color #Inward

I, too, find the flower beautiful in its outward appearance.  But a deeper beauty lies concealed within.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Beautiful #Lying #Flower

Vertical and horizontal lines are the expression of two opposing forces; they exist everywhere and dominate everything; their reciprocal action constitutes 'life'. I recognized that the equilibrium of any particular aspect of nature rests on the equivalence of its opposites.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Expression #Opposites #Two

The relation of color and the relation of proportion are both based on the relation of position.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Color #Proportion #Relation

To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Spiritual #Art #Reality

abstract art is not the creation of another reality but the true vision of reality.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Art #Reality #Vision

By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting a new plastic reality will be created.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Reality #Sculpture #Architecture

In past times when one lived in contact with nature, abstraction was easy; it was done unconsciously. Now in our denaturalized age abstraction becomes an effort.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Past #Effort #Age

Intellect confuses intuition.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Intuition #Intellect

It is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Strong #Art #Curves

The purer the artist's 'mirror' is, the more true reality reflects in it. Overseeing the historical culture of art, we must conclude that the mirror only slowly is purified. Time producing this purifying shows a gradual, more constant and objective image of reality.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Art #Reality #Mirrors

Nature or, that which I see, inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation, still just an external foundation, of things...
-- Piet Mondrian

#Nature #Emotional #Inspire

Reality manifests itself as constant and objective - independent of us, but as changeable in space and time. Consequently, its reflection in us contains both properties. Mixed up in our mind, these properties are confused and we do not have a proper image of reality.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Confused #Independent #Reflection

I hate everything approaching temperamental inspiration,'sacred fire'and all those attributes of genius which serve only as cloaks for untidy minds.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Hate #Inspiration #Fire

Why should art continue to follow nature when every other field has left nature behind?
-- Piet Mondrian

#Art #Fields #Should

The unconscious in us warns us that in art we have to followoneparticular path. And if wefollow it, it isnotthe sign of anunconscious act.On the contrary, it showsthat there is in our ordinary consciousness a greater awareness of our unconsciousness.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Art #Path #Ordinary

Colored planes, by their position and size as well as by their value, express only relationships, not forms.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Color #Size #Planes

All painting - the painting of the past as well as of the present - shows us that its essential plastic means were only line and color.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Art #Mean #Past

In art the search for a content which is collectively understandable is false; the content will always be individual.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Art #Individual

I think you too recognize the important relationship between philosophy and art, and it is just this relationship that most painters deny. The great masters do grasp it, unconsciously; but I believe that a painter's conscious spiritual knowledge will have a much greater influence upon his art, and that it would be due only to a weakness in him, or lack of genius, should this spiritual knowledge be harmful to his art...
-- Piet Mondrian

#Spiritual #Art #Philosophy

The surface of things gives enjoyment, their interiority gives life.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Giving #Surface #Enjoyment

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.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Expression #Ideas #Lines

Cubism did not accept the logical consequences of its own discoveries; it was not developing abstraction towards its own goal, the expression of pure reality.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Reality #Expression #Discovery

The essence of painting has actually always been to make it [the universal] plastically perceptible through colour and line.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Essence #Lines #Painting

I don't want pictures, I want to find things out.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Want

Observing sea, sky and stars, I sought to indicate their plastic function through a multiplicity of crossing verticals and horizontals. Impressed by the vastness of Nature, I was trying to express its expansion, rest and unity.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Stars #Sea #Sky

I wish to approach truth as closely as is possible, and therefore I abstract everything until I arrive at the fundamental quality of objects.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Quality #Wish #Fundamentals

The only problem in art is to achieve a balance between subjective and objective.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Art #Balance #Problem

If the universal is the essential, then it is the basis of all life and art. Recognizing and uniting with universal therefore gives us the greatest aesthetic satisfaction, the greatest emotion of beauty. the more this union with the universal is felt, the more individual subjectivity declines.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Art #Giving #Individuality

Everything is expressed through RELATIONSHIPS.
-- Piet Mondrian

The colored planes, as much by position and dimension as by the greater value given to color, plastically express only relationships and not forms.
-- Piet Mondrian

#Color #Dimensions #Given

Art on the contrary sought this harmony in practice (of art itself). More and more in its creations it has given inwardness to that what surrounds us in nature, until, in Neo-Plasticism, nature is no longer dominant. This achievement of balance may prepare the way for the fulfilment of man and signal the end of (what we call) art. (1921/23
-- Piet Mondrian

#Art #Men #Practice