Piet Mondrian’s rigorously geometric paintings in primary colors are icons of the 20th century that had a powerful impact on popular taste in art and design. This volume brings together more than 230 superb paintings with documentary images from the artist’s life. The less-well-known work that Mondrian did in the 30 years before his breakthrough to abstraction—especially his landscape and fl ower paintings—is remarkably beautiful, and to see it arranged chronologically is to enter the mind of an artist who is constantly looking for the next step that will take him from traditional realism to a universal vision of color and form. The book includes rare photographs of Mondrian’s studios in Paris and New York City as well as reproductions of more than 1,000 known works of Mondrian’s in black and white.

Cees W. de Jong is a Dutch designer, publisher, and curator; Robert P. Welsh was co-author of the Mondrian catalogue raisonné; Katjuscha Otte, Ingelies Vermeulen, and Marjory Degen are Dutch art historians; Marty Bax studies the relationship between art and Western Exoticism.