Mondrian

Piet Mondrian played a major role in the development of abstract art during the first half of the 20th century. As the moving spirit of De Stijl, the most austere of all abstractionist movements, Mondrian developed and carried out his idea of art almost in isolation ; he owed little to any other artist or school of painting. The pure geometrical works of his mature style, often composed entirely of squares of vivid reds and yellows carefully balanced with areas of white and intersected by vertical or horizontal lines, are the direct expression of his belief in an art freed from subjectivity—an art that was the expression of a universal unchangeable truth.