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 More Quotes by Piet Mondrian More Quotes From Piet Mondrian By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting a new plastic reality will be created. Piet Mondrian sculpture architecture reality 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 mean past art In art the search for a content which is collectively understandable is false; the content will always be individual. Piet Mondrian individual art It is a task of art to express clear vision of reality. Piet Mondrian vision reality art 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 mirrors reality art 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 emotional nature inspire 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 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 reality art 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 effort age past Recognizing and uniting with the universal therefore gives us the greatest aesthetic satisfaction, the greatest emotion of beauty. The more determinately (consciously) this recognition is experienced, the more intense our happiness. The more determinately (consciously) this union with the universal is felt, the more individual subjectivity declines. Piet Mondrian giving life art 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 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 fulfillment of man and signal the end of (what we call) art. Piet Mondrian practice men art The essence of painting has actually always been to make it [the universal] plastically perceptible through colour and line. Piet Mondrian painting lines essence 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 dimensions form color 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 lines expression ideas What is natural does not have to be a representation of something. I'm now working on a thing that is a reconstruction of a starry sky, and yet I'm making it without a given from nature. Someone who says he uses a theme from nature can be right, but also someone who says he uses nothing at all. Piet Mondrian use doe sky 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 expression discovery reality Why should art continue to follow nature when every other field has left nature behind? Piet Mondrian fields should art Evolution is always the work of pioneers, and their followers are always small in number. This following is not a clique; it is the result of all the existing social forces; it is composed of all those who through innate or acquired capacity are ready to represent the existing degree of human revolution. Piet Mondrian pioneers degrees numbers 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
