Piet Mondrian writes on the wall

Mentre obsrvava els quadres a l'antiga Tate de Millbank, em vaig anar entretnint a copiar en una petita llibreta els pensaments d'aquest pintor, nascut a Holanda el 1872 i mort a Nordamèrica el 1944, que penjaven de les parets blanques.

MONDRIAN: NATURE TO ABSTRACTION
(Tate Gallery, London, 26 July-30 November 1997)

“If art has to be a living reality for modern man, it has to be a pure expression of the new conciousness of the age.” (1917)

“Art advances where religion once led. Religion’s basic content was to transform the natural; in practice, however, religion always sought to harmonize man with nature, that is, with untransformed nature. Likewise, in general, Theosophy and Anthroposophy -although they already knew the basic symbol of equivalence- could never achieve the experience of equivalence relationship, achieve real, fully human harmony.
Art, on the other hand, sought this in practice.” (1922)

“Neo-Plastic writing speaks of harmony, equilibrium, pure plastic, the abstract, the universal, etc. This had caused much misunderstanding and will cause more. When Neo-Plasticism speaks of the abstract, it does not mean the indefinite or vague, but on the contrary the most determined, the most real. When it speaks of equilibrated relationship, Neo-Plasticism does not mean symmetry but constant contrast.” (1924)

“What do I want to express in my work? Nothing rather than what every artist seeks: to express harmony through the equivalence of relationships of lines, colours, and planes. But only in the clearest strong way.” (1934)

“Everybody knows that painting and sculpture are concerned with the expression of the essence of art and not with the representation that cloaks it. But not everyone is convinced that the essence can be plastically expressed exclusively through lines, colours, form, and their mutual relationships, thus without any particular subject matter.” (1938).

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