Farm near Duivendrecht

About this artwork

Though Piet Mondrian is best known for his nonrepresentational paintings, his basic vision was rooted in landscape. He was particularly inspired by the flat topography of his native Holland, a subject he returned to even after he had begun working in an abstract style after attending an exhibition of the Cubist paintings of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in 1911. Mondrian first sketched this farm around 1905. Nine of the twenty known related paintings and drawings of the farm, however, were cr...

Art Historical Context

Piet Mondrian’s *Farm near Duivendrecht*, painted around 1916, captures a quiet Dutch countryside scene in oil on canvas. Measuring roughly 34 by 42½ inches, the work belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago’s modern art collection. At this moment in his career, Mondrian was still rooted in the Dutch landscape tradition yet beginning to simplify forms and emphasize structure, a step that would soon lead him toward complete abstraction. Created during the First World War while Mondrian was stranded in the Netherlands, the painting reflects both personal circumstance and artistic transition. The farm buildings and surrounding fields are rendered with broad planes and muted tones, showing his growing interest in reducing nature to essential shapes. These early experiments with geometry and balance laid the groundwork for the grid-based compositions that would define his later De Stijl style. Today the canvas offers visitors a rare glimpse of Mondrian before his iconic primary-color grids. It reminds us that even the most radical modernists began by looking closely at the world around them, gradually distilling what they saw into pure visual harmony.

About the Artist

Piet Mondrian · 1872–1944

**Piet Mondrian** (born Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944) was a Dutch painter and theoretician who became one of the most influential figures in 20th-century abstract art. Born in Amersfoort, Netherlands, as the second of his parents’ children, he grew up in a creative household; his father was a qualified drawing teacher and headmaster, while his uncle, Frits Mondriaan, a...