Mondrian DesignMondrian Style Design

 

Students create a fast project in the style of Piet Mondrian, using primary colors.

Materials

  • Drawing paper
  • Red, yellow, and blue crayons
  • Black markers
  • A straight edge
  • Pencils

Directions

  1. View some examples of Piet Mondrian's work. More examples here. Piet Mondrian was a Dutch abstract painter born in Amersfoort. He painted in a spare, precise, geometric manner mostly using primary colors. It was a style that Mondrian called neoplasticism ("nieuwe beelding" in Dutch).

    Mondrian was born on March 7, 1872 in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. After studing to be a teacher, Mondrian studied art at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (Amsterdam Academy of Fine Arts) from 1892 until 1897. During this time, he painted mostly landscapes (including a series on trees).

    He moved to Paris, France, around 1912. During World War 1, he moved back to the Netherlands. In 1917, he, Theo van Doesburg, and some others founded a very influential art magazine called "De Stijl," which means "The Style."

    In 1919, Mondrian returned to Paris, where he stayed until 1938. That year, he moved to London, England, where he painted for two years. In 1940, he moved to New York, USA, where he spent the final four years of his life. He died on February 1, 1944.

    Mondrian's paintings did not sell very well during his lifetime. Mondrian had his first one-man show when he was 70 years old, just two years before he died of pneumonia.

  2. Draw several lines on the paper using your straight edge. You can put your lines anywhere you want but here is a general guide:
    • Divide your paper up by drawing draw five or six horizontal lines.
    • Next, draw four or five vertical lines.
    • Make some of the lines go all of the way across the paper, and make some lines stop part way across.
    • Make the lines different distances apart so you get different size rectangles.

  3. Choose some spaces to fill in with the primary colors - red, yellow and blue. Don't overdo the color. Leave some white spaces. Try to choose a pattern of colors so that the adjoining spaces have different colors.

  4. When you have finished coloring the spaces, go over all of the lines with a black marker.
Try your hand at a Virtual Mondrian-Style Painting .