Mondrian: Foundations


Piet Mondrian, Beach with Five Piers at Domburg (detail), 1909. Oil on canvas on board. Gift of Maria and Conrad Janis by and through the Janis Living Trust.


Piet Mondrian, Beach with Five Piers at Domburg (detail), 1909. Oil on canvas on board. Gift of Maria and Conrad Janis by and through the Janis Living Trust.
In the years around 1900, before Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) created some of the most recognizable abstract canvases of the last century, he turned his eye to the characteristic sights of the Dutch landscape: canals, windmills, fields, flowers, and trees. Mondrian’s earlier and lesser-known works reveal a restless and experimental artist who constantly reinvented himself, absorbing new influences and moving away from conventions of representation.
“Mondrian: Foundations” presents 28 paintings and works on paper, primarily from Mondrian’s early career, that trace the artist’s explorations as he progressed from realistic traditions to experimental abstractions. The exhibition shows Mondrian’s evolution from his earliest-known painting, The Large Ponds in the Hague Forest (1887)—made when he was just 15 years old—to his classic Composition with Blue, Yellow, and Red (1927). That work, with its white background, spare black lines, and blocks of color, seems strikingly different from Mondrian’s early works. But the early works show many affinities with his later abstractions: a strength of intuition and precision, an emphasis on the structure of natural forms, and innate feeling for rhythm and dynamism. Visitors can trace Mondrian’s journey toward abstraction and consider this icon of 20th-century modernism through a new lens.
Many works in the exhibition are part of a gift from Maria and Conrad Janis by and through the Janis Living Trust. This transformational gift makes the MFA one of the leading institutions outside the Netherlands for the study and exhibition of Mondrian’s early work.
“I want to get as close as possible to the truth and am therefore abstracting everything until I get to the foundation…of things.”
—Piet Mondrian
- Clementine Brown Gallery (Gallery 170)

Piet Mondrian, Beach with Five Piers at Domburg, 1909
Oil on canvas on board. Gift of Maria and Conrad Janis by and through the Janis Living Trust.

Piet Mondrian, Upright Sunflower, about 1908
Brush and ink, watercolor, and pastel. Gift of Maria and Conrad Janis by and through the Janis Living Trust.

Piet Mondrian, Post Mill at Heeswijk, Side View, 1904
Oil on canvas. Gift of Maria and Conrad Janis by and through the Janis Living Trust.

Piet Mondrian, Bend in the Gein with Row of Ten or Eleven Poplars, about 1905–06
Charcoal and stumping with touches of white chalk. William E. Nickerson Fund. © 2023 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust.

Piet Mondrian, Study of a Dahlia (Sketchbook Sheet 1), 1908
Graphite. Gift of Maria and Conrad Janis by and through the Janis Living Trust.

Piet Mondrian, Eucalyptus (unfinished), 1910
Oil on canvas. Gift of Maria and Conrad Janis by and through the Janis Living Trust.

Piet Mondrian, Composition with Blue, Yellow, and Red, 1927
Oil on canvas. Gift of Maria and Conrad Janis in memory of Sidney and Harriet Janis, with gratitude to Arne Glimcher. © 2023 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust.

Piet Mondrian, Chrysanthemum Study, 1908–09
Transparent and opaque watercolor over graphite. Gift of Maria and Conrad Janis by and through the Janis Living Trust. © 2023 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust.

Piet Mondrian, Farm Building with White Side Facade, about 1905
Oil on canvas. Gift of Maria and Conrad Janis by and through the Janis Living Trust.

Piet Mondrian, Landscape with Pink Cloud, 1906–07
Oil on canvas. Gift of Maria and Conrad Janis by and through the Janis Living Trust.

Piet Mondrian, Apple Tree, about 1912
Charcoal. Bequest of Bartlett McAndrew.