Quotes from Piet Mondrian

I came to the destruction of volume by the use of the plane. This I accomplished by means of lines cutting the planes. But still, the plane remained too intact. So I came to making only lines and brought the colour within the lines. Now the only problem was to destroy these lines also through mutual oppositions.

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel. Piet Mondrian The Artist's Way A Spiritual Path to Greater Creativity by Julia Cameron

I wish to approach truth as closely as is possible, and therefore I abstract everything until I arrive at the fundamental quality of objects.

It is not important to make many pictures but that I have one picture right.

The clarification of equilibrium through plastic art is of great importance for humanity. It reveals that although human life in time is doomed to disequilibrium, notwithstanding this, it is based on equilibrium. It demonstrates that equilibrium can become more and more living in us.

One can rightly speak of an evolution in plastic art. It is of the greatest importance to note this fact, for it reveals the true way of art - the only path along which we can advance.

To move the picture into our surroundings and give it real existence has been my ideal since I came to abstract painting.

The position of the artist if humble. He is essentially a channel.

I am only satisfied insofar as I feel 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' is a definite progress, but even about this picture I am not quite satisfied. There is still too much of the old in it.

To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual.

Art is the path to being spiritual.

Whoever says he is starting from a given in nature may be right, and so is he who says he is starting from nothing!

Everything is expressed through relationship. Colour can exist only through other colours, dimension through other dimensions, position through other positions that oppose them. That is why I regard relationship as the principal thing.

I do not know how I shall develop, but for the present, I am continuing to work within ordinary, generally known terrain, different only because of a deep substratum, which leads those who are receptive to sense the finer regions.

True Boogie-Woogie I conceive as homogeneous in intention with mine in painting: destruction of melody, which is the equivalent of destruction of natural appearance, and construction through the continuous opposition of pure means - dynamic rhythm.

Just as pure abstract art is not dogmatic, neither is it decorative.

We need words to name and designate things. But we have only a static language with which to express ourselves.

The most advanced minds as well as the least advanced are obliged to use the same words. If we adopt new words, it will be even more difficult - if not impossible - to make ourselves understood. The new man must therefore express himself in conventional language.

The spiritual (i.e. the supersensory) has many degrees; thus, the term 'spiritual' is used both for the scale of degrees away from the physical towards the spirit, but also only for the spiritual proper.

All that is base in the masses is temporary, no doubt serving only to prevent evolution (that of the elite, as well) from proceeding too quickly and thus not becoming 'reality.'

Reality only appears to us tragical because of the disequilibrium and confusion of its appearances.

Experience was my only teacher; I knew little of the modern art movement. When I first saw the works of the Impressionists, van Gogh, van Dongen, and Fauves, I admired it. But I had to seek the true way alone.

Non-figurative art is created by establishing a dynamic rhythm of determinate mutual relations which excludes the formation of any particular form.

I think that the destructive element is too much neglected in art.