Piet Mondrian.

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Piet Mondrian was born Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, Jr. in Amersfoort the Netherlands, March 7, 1872. From 1892 to 1897 he studied art the Rijksakademie van Beelende Kunsten in Amsterdam. Up until 1908, his paintings reflected the conventional Dutch landscapes. In 1909 he recognized the avant-garde art movements of the time, such as Dutch Impressionism, Fauvism, and Symbolism, and thus withdrew from the mere imitation of nature. In 1909 he decided to join the Theosophical Society, and turned to an inward spiritual world thanks to the Society's religious mysticism. This same year a major exhibition of his art was held at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

In 1911 he discovered the cubist works of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque at the first Moderne Kunstkring and subsequently decided to move to Paris. In Paris from 1912-1914 he decided to produce his own version. After World War I started he decided to stay in Holland, which was a neutral nation.

Thus isolated from Paris, the artists of Holland started a new independent Dutch movement, called Neo-Plasticism. In 1917, Mondrian helped form the de Stijl grouped which published its own periodical, which lasted until 1932.

Mondrian's ideas were put into print in 1920, one year after he returned to Paris, in the pamphlet Neoplasticism.

Neo-Plasticism involved principles of abstraction and simplification in the areas of painting, sculpture, architecture, graphic, and industrial design. Mondrian exhibited with the De Stijl in 1923, but he withdrew from the group in 1925 when another member of the group reintroduced diagonal elements into his work. In 1930, Piet exhibited with Cercle et Carre and in 1931 he joined Abstraction-Creation.

Mondrian was forced to move to London in 1938 during World War II and immigrated to the United States in October 1940, in New York City. Once in...