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Piet Mondriaan — at Mondriaan House museum
Hilversum, 26 November 2019 — Being at home in the universe? Piet Mondriaan shows how.
It happened at the Mondriaan House museum in Amersfoort, the Netherlands.
Mondriaan’s Example
During my visit there last week, I learned why Piet Mondriaan was more than a painter: he showed us in a unique way how we can exercise leadership to engage with life.
Raised in a conservative family, Mondriaan’s father was the founder and principal of a local school, right where the museum is now.
At a young age, Piet decided to break with family tradition to train as a painter, causing a split with his father, who refused to support him in his further education.
It was a first, and decisive, step for Mondriaan to start exploring life on his own terms. From then on, he invested himself fully in that exploration.
Supporting himself initially as a landscape and portrait painter, he soon ventured out in search of new ways of artistic expression, as his oeuvre so clearly demonstrates.
He found what he wanted after leaving his country and moving to Paris, where he soon met up met with fellow painters who showed similar interests. The seed for creative exploration was sown, and a new plant began to grow.
Personal Transformation
When the First World War forced Mondriaan to return to the Netherlands, he did not revert to his landscape painting but instead took up writing as he co-founded the art magazine De Stijl (The Style), which heralded a new art movement with followers in many countries.
When Mondriaan returned to Paris in 2019, he was disappointed to find that the work of his artist friends had not progressed as much as his own. By writing for De Stijl, he had made better use of the war years to advance his own personal transformation.
His unique style of painting was evolving too, into straight lines and square shapes, with colors mixed in, until the black dividing lines disappeared (destruction, he called it) to let his perspective be defined solely by color and shape.
The combination of vertical and horizontal lines is said to have been inspired by observing male and female perspectives as a part of his journey into philosophy, another perspective on life he ventured into.
To learn more about philosophy, he joined the Theosophical Society, an international movement that started in India and searched for experiencing wholeness in the universe. The movement attracted followers in Europe, including Mondriaan and, later, one of my aunts.
Lines Life Love
Lines, words, and philosophy were not all that Mondriaan explored. He went beyond.
Interactive display at Mondriaan House museum
Music became a central part of how he experienced life and created art—an important language for loving life, his work, and the women whose company he enjoyed.
He lived in Paris, London, and later New York. Three cities where life happened, at great speed, and offering space for courageous avant-garde artists to express themselves. That’s where Mondriaan chose to be, to express his love for life.
His last work Victory Boogie Woogie was created in New York in 1944, capturing the boisterous mood of the time, full of change, and pregnant with possibilities to create a new and better world.
A relentless explorer of life through painting, writing, philosophy, music, love, and being at home in the universe.
Relentless Explorer
Piet Mondriaan’s example of feeling at home in the universe inspires me to not hold back on my own leadership journey, but to continue investing fully and courageously in exploring life from many dimensions, and learning together with fellow leaders who choose to join me on the journey.
Are you one of them?
If you’re interested to transform and expand yourself as a leader in many of life’s dimensions, our community of leaders may be a good fit for you. Visit Grow3Leaders to request your invitation.
Joining is free of charge—and not free of commitment. Like Mondriaan.