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simplifying natural forms. In a famous series of tree paintings done in Paris in 1911-12 under the influence of Cubism, his advance from description to abstraction is clear. In both paintings shown, the motif is a bare-branched tree. In the earlier painting at left, the image of spreading branches and thick trunk is discernible, while in the later work, Mondrian dissolves the tree in a web of lines until it is virtually unrecognizable. The space between the lines becomes as important as the lines themselves to balance the painting. It was a short, but significant, step from the second painting to making lines and the spaces between them the sole subject of his work.

Mondrian, “Gray Tree,” 1912, Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.

Mondrian, “Flowering Apple Tree,” 1912, Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.

Mondrian, “Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow,” 1920, MoMA, NY. One of the most important proponents of abstract act, Mondrian painted geometric designs in limited colors.

The major contribution of De Stijl to art was its drive toward absolute abstraction, without any reference whatsoever to objects in nature. “Art systematically eliminates,” Mondrian said, “the world of nature and man.” He wanted art to be as mathematical as possible, a blueprint for an organized life.

A control freak, Mondrian even transformed his own environment into one of his paintings. He covered his studio walls with rectangles in primary colors or gray, white, and black. Although the studio was as sparsely furnished as a monk’s cell, he kept an artificial tulip in a vase, its leaves painted white (since he had banned the color green). He painted all furniture white or black and his record player bright red.

Mondrian was important in the history of art for opposing the cult of subjective feeling. By the 1950s his easily identifiable style was so famous that for many it became a symbol of modern art.

MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE: GEOMETRY TO LIVE IN

Before the twentieth century, “prestige” architecture always meant rehashing the past. Victorian homes were bulky and complicated, with turrets and carved gingerbread. The new International Style of the 1920s, so called because it transcended national boundaries, changed all that. For these architects, science and industry were almost a religion. Their streamlined designs gave form to the Machine Age by rejecting all historical ornament. It was like shedding a Victorian bathing costume, complete with bloomers, parasol, and ruffled cap, for a string bikini.

GROPIUS: BAUHAUS DESIGN. Walter Gropius (pronounced GROW pee us; 1883-1969), director of Germany’s influential Bauhaus school of design, probably had more indirect influence on the look of modern cities than any single man. He was mentor to generations of architects who radically changed the look of metropolises everywhere. Gropius conceived buildings totally in terms of twentieth-century technology, with no reference to the past. The Bauhaus buildings he constructed are simple glass boxes, which became a worldwide cliché.

“Architecture is a collective art,” Gropius believed, urging his Bauhaus colleagues to collaborate like medieval cathedral-builders. The architecture he envisioned obliterated individual personality in favor of designs that could be mass-produced. In a debased form, Gropius knock-offs became the anonymous, high-rise buildings in every city from Topeka to Tokyo.

Rietveld, Schroeder House, 1924, Utrecht. Rietveld used only primary colors with black, white, and gray to design this International Style house of flat planes and straight lines like a Mondrian painting.

THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE

GOAL: High-tech, clean design

ENEMIES: Ornament, historical reference

HOUSE: Machine for living

STYLE: Glass and steel boxes

FAVORITE SUBJECT: Geometry

CULMINATION: Seagram Building

QUOTE: Mies van der Rohe, while strolling the

Chicago lakeshore surveying his work: “Well, they will know we were here.”

MIES: LESS IS MORE. Gropius’s most famous colleague was German architect Mies