Piet Mondrian’s art is best understood as a spiritual pursuit—an effort to distil visual reality into its purest, most balanced essence, in order to reflect a higher, universal harmony. Though he is widely recognised as a founder of geometric abstraction and a key figure in modern art, Mondrian did not approach painting as a formal or intellectual exercise. For him, art was a tool for revealing the underlying order of the universe—a sacred geometry of balance, clarity, and spiritual elevation.
Born in the Netherlands in 1872, Mondrian was raised in a devout Calvinist household, and though he would later move beyond the doctrines of organised religion, his early spiritual foundation remained integral to his worldview. In his early years, he painted landscapes in the Dutch tradition, but even these works hinted at an underlying rhythm, a search for inner structure. As his career developed, he became deeply engaged with Theosophy, particularly the writings of Helena Blavatsky and the Dutch theosophist M.H.J. Schoenmaekers. These teachings, which emphasised the unity of all life and the evolution of consciousness, profoundly shaped his ideas about art.
For Mondrian, the surface of a painting was not a window into the physical world, but a space for expressing spiritual truth. His transformation from figuration to abstraction was not a stylistic evolution—it was a metaphysical one. He gradually eliminated representation from his work, reducing his visual language to vertical and horizontal lines, squares, and primary colours. This was not minimalism for its own sake—it was a process of purification. He believed that by removing the particular, he could reveal the universal.
Mondrian called his mature style neoplasticism, or De Stijl—a term that reflects his desire to create a new visual order, one that mirrored the deeper harmony of the cosmos. In these compositions, everything is held in tension and balance: colour and form, line and space, energy and stillness. Each element exists in relation to the whole, in a carefully measured unity that suggests an ideal state of being.
His commitment to spiritual abstraction was not passive. Mondrian believed that by contemplating pure form and colour, viewers could be brought into contact with a higher consciousness. He saw his paintings as meditative tools, spaces of equilibrium where the ego could dissolve and a deeper awareness could emerge. In this sense, his work is closer to a form of spiritual practice than to conventional image-making.
Even in his later works, such as Broadway Boogie Woogie, where he introduces a rhythmic pulse of colour inspired by the energy of New York City, the spiritual impulse remains. The grids are alive, vibrating with joy, but still deeply ordered—a visual hymn to balance in the midst of movement.
Piet Mondrian’s art is a rare fusion of intellect and spirit. He sought not to represent the world, but to reveal the invisible structure that gives it coherence and meaning. In a time of chaos and fragmentation, he offered a vision of harmony—a spiritual architecture built from the simplest elements, and yet capable of expressing the eternal. Through his work, he reminds us that clarity is not coldness, and that through simplicity, we can find the sublime.
