by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on September 29, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
About the painting
Mondrian's painted work runs from observed Dutch landscapes, flowers and portraits to Cubist trees, stripped-back Paris grids and the pulse of New York. This guide groups the researched artwork pages by period and subject so readers can follow the change without treating every similarly titled Composition as the same canvas.[1]
At a glance
- ArtistPiet Mondrian (1872–1944)
- ScopeSelected paintings across his career
- Research basisRKD digital catalogue raisonné and collecting museum records
- How to use this pageFollow individual object links for collection, date, medium and catalogue identity
Mondrian across periods
Contents
- Early landscapes and town views
- Zeeland and the move toward brighter colour
- Trees, still lifes and Cubism
- The mature compositions
- New York rhythm
- Browse the paintings
- How to follow the change across the paintings
- What to check on an artwork page
- More than one path through the catalogue
- How is Mondrian's painted work catalogued?
- Why does the physical canvas matter?
- How does new research change the list?
Early landscapes and town views
Mondrian learned from the landscape around Winterswijk, Amsterdam and the Gein. View of Winterswijk places village and farm labour together. The Stammer Mill with Streaked Sky and the Oostzijdse Mill in Moonlight show how a windmill could anchor changing skies and reflections. The separate Gein mill pages make their catalogue identities clear rather than merging all mill images under a single generic title.[1]
 The Red Tree Piet Mondrian.jpg)
Willow Grove: Impression of Light and Shadow and Woods near Oele put trees and light at the centre. In these works, marks and colour already carry much of the visual energy, but the subjects remain legible. The brushwork, supports and collections vary, so the page for each painting is the place to check its object details.
Zeeland and the move toward brighter colour
The Zeeland works bring high-key orange, blue and yellow into buildings and seascapes. Compare the Zoutelande church facade, The Red Mill, Sea Toward Sunset and Seascape. Their dates and titles are close, yet they are separate objects in the RKD and museum catalogues. The Domburg dune view shows another way Mondrian organised the coast into long colour bands.[1]
Trees, still lifes and Cubism
The Red Tree, Gray Tree and The Tree A offer a particularly clear path through Mondrian's formal changes. Branches shift from expressive contours toward a compressed network of lines and planes. The 1913 Tableau no. 2 / Composition no. VII grows from a tree study, while the 1914 Composition no. V is linked by MoMA to a possible Paris facade source.[2][3]
The two Gingerpot still lifes are another useful comparison: the second version breaks up the recognisable arrangement. Mondrian also continued to paint flowers. Amaryllis, White Phloxes and Two Arum Lilies show why the naturalistic strand should not disappear from an account of his career.
The mature compositions
In the 1920s Mondrian worked with unequal white and coloured planes separated by horizontal and vertical black lines. The tall Cologne Tableau I and the later Tableau 2 are distinct paintings, despite the apparent sequence in their names. The large Tableau No. IV lozenge rotates the square support while keeping the painted lines upright. The Lisbon Tableau with yellow, black, blue, red and grey has a source-date disagreement that its own page explains.
The heavily visited Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue has its own object crosswalk and connections to the related Google artwork snippet. Read its page before using a date, holding museum or image from another red-yellow-blue composition. Mondrian repeated a limited vocabulary, so the exact layout and inventory number matter more than a generic translated title.
New York rhythm
The late Trafalgar Square, Broadway Boogie Woogie and Victory Boogie Woogie show the grid becoming more closely spaced and rhythmically varied. These works have distinct dates and histories. The last was left unfinished at Mondrian's death. Their individual pages trace those differences through museum and RKD evidence rather than presenting them as interchangeable examples of “the Mondrian style”.[1]
Watch: Piet Mondrian
See his studio, the move toward geometric abstraction and the rhythms of his New York paintings.
Piet Mondrian: Abstract Painting as We Know It
Curator Michael White explores the paintings and Mondrian’s studio as an abstract space.
Watch on YouTubeBrowse the paintings
Choose a work below to explore its image, history and sources.
Piet Mondrian's Neoplasticist Paintings
 Piet Mondrian.jpg)
Piet Mondrian's Tree Paintings
Piet Mondrian's Windmill Paintings
Piet Mondrian in Zeeland, 1908-1911
Piet Mondrian's Portraits and Self Portrait Paintings
 Piet Mondrian.jpg)
 Piet Mondrian.jpg)
Piet Mondrian's Landscape Paintings
Piet Mondrian's Still Life and Flower Paintings
 Piet Mondrian.jpg)
 Piet Mondrian.jpg)
How to follow the change across the paintings
The familiar straight-line paintings make more sense when the earlier subjects are kept in view. A mill sets a dark vertical against a horizon or a reflection. A tree offers trunk, branching and intervals of sky. A still life arranges upright vessels beside horizontal table edges. These are not hidden grids waiting to be discovered, but they gave Mondrian repeated opportunities to test how a picture holds contrasting directions together. Compare the Stammer Mill, Gray Tree and Gingerpot II in that order: each page identifies a particular object and shows a different degree of reduction.
Colour changed as well as line. The orange and blue Zeeland coast is much brighter than many earlier Dutch views, while the muted Cubist works of 1913–14 restrict colour again for a different purpose. The mature red, yellow and blue planes are not simply the result of a steady march towards brighter paint. They are part of an effort to give a few chosen elements clear, unequal roles. The 1914 MoMA Composition no. V and 1921 Cologne Tableau I make that difference easy to test.
What to check on an artwork page
Mondrian reused words such as composition and tableau, and museums sometimes translate or punctuate titles differently. Date, collection, dimensions and catalogue number together make a safer identification than title alone. The Zürich Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue is distinct from the Belgrade Composition II, even though web captions can blur them. The numbered Tableau 2 is also separate from both 1913 and 1914 works carrying longer numbered titles. Each article states the evidence for the particular image displayed.
Medium matters too. A work painted on cardboard, a drawing, an oil canvas and a later printed reproduction can look similar at thumbnail size. The object records in RKD and museum collections should settle those material claims. This guide links to the individual pages for that reason; it is a route through paintings rather than a substitute for their catalogues.[1]
More than one path through the catalogue
The subjects do not form a perfectly straight ladder from representation to abstraction. In one path, compare mills: a close, cropped Broekzijder view makes the sails press beyond the frame, while the Stammer Mill sets a working building, bridge and figures beneath a layered sky. The later Red Mill transforms another landmark through unusually intense colour. These are different questions about viewpoint, weather and painted structure, not three interchangeable pictures of a Dutch windmill.
A second path follows flowers. Yellow Chrysanthemums in a Ginger Pot fills a warm field with many heads; Two Chrysanthemum Blossoms isolates pale blooms against darkness. White Phloxes is a narrow vertical study whose name required later catalogue correction, while Two Arum Lilies belongs to a later naturalistic strand. The subject persists, but support, palette and purpose change. The persistence of flowers is a useful check against a career story in which Mondrian simply stopped looking at nature once he began making abstract paintings.[1]
Portraits offer a third route. The 1900 self portrait and 1918 self portrait come from very different moments, while portraits of named sitters belong to his early commissioned and social world. Their identities and media need the same source care as the famous grids. This wider range is why a painting index should help readers move among subjects rather than imply that every page is a preparatory step towards a red-yellow-blue composition.
How is Mondrian's painted work catalogued?
RKD's digital catalogue raisonné gives readers a way to move beyond title searches. Its editors explain that A-numbers largely cover the early work, B-numbers the Cubist and abstract period, sketchbooks and related studies, and C-numbers later naturalistic work and copies. The classes are research tools, not a claim that Mondrian stopped making recognisable subjects on a fixed day. The catalogue separately lists late flower pictures, a useful reminder that the history of the paintings is broader than a line from trees to grids.[4]
A number is especially valuable when titles are translated or repeated. Several works can be called Composition, and even similar combinations of red, blue and yellow identify different canvases. Link a painting to its date, medium, dimensions, collection and catalogue number before drawing conclusions about it. The site's individual pages use that method; this hub provides paths through the larger group.[1][4]
Why does the physical canvas matter?
Kunstmuseum Den Haag's conservation material makes clear that these are painted objects with different supports and histories. Its specialists describe early small paintings on loose pieces of canvas later attached to card, and note that Mondrian sometimes reused a painted support when money was scarce. For Tableau I of 1921, a former painting may survive on the reverse of a reused canvas. The museum also describes coloured card, paper and tape used to test abstract arrangements. These examples should not be projected onto every work, but they show why a tidy thumbnail cannot establish how a particular painting was built.[5]
The material distinction is clearest at the end of his career. MoMA records Broadway Boogie Woogie as oil on canvas; Kunstmuseum Den Haag lists paint together with tape, paper, charcoal and pencil on the unfinished Victory Boogie Woogie. The difference is evidence about the states in which the two works survive. Comparing their object records alongside their images lets a viewer ask more precise questions than “Which grid came later?”[5][6][7]
How does new research change the list?
A catalogue is a researched account of known objects, not a frozen inventory. When RKD launched the digital catalogue in 2018, it reported 1,473 known Mondrian works and 30 newly attributed works added through recent research. Among its examples was an Oostzijdse Mill by Moonlight that had gone missing from view and was acquired by the Rijksmuseum in 2005. This illustrates why older checklists and current object records can differ: works reappear, attributions are reconsidered and ownership histories are corrected.[8]
RKD says its online catalogue includes exhibition, auction, provenance and literature information and can be searched by date, subject, technique and format. Those fields answer different questions. A location identifies where a painting is currently recorded; provenance traces earlier owners; a subject label groups pictures for study. None of those fields alone proves that two similarly titled images are the same canvas. For a reader moving through this gallery, the safest method is to keep the RKD number beside the museum inventory number and compare the pictured composition itself.[8]
Mondrian artworks directory
Frequently asked questions
What did Mondrian paint before grids?
Landscapes, town views, mills, trees, flowers, portraits and still lifes, many with clearly observed subjects.[1]
Are all Composition titles the same work?
No. Numbered and translated titles recur; use a collection inventory and RKD number to identify an object.[1]
Where should I start?
Try the Red Tree, the 1913 Composition no. VII, the 1921 Tableau I, and Broadway Boogie Woogie to see four very different stages.
Discussion
Which early work has the strongest structure?
Reader Insights
How did the tree pictures change?
Which late painting changes your sense of the grid?
Which late painting changes your sense of the grid?
Join the Conversation
Share what you notice in this painting below.
References
- RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, Piet Mondrian: Digital Catalogue Raisonné, object and period index. View source.
- The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation, teaching material on the 1913 tree-derived Composition no. VII. View source.
- The Museum of Modern Art, 1914 Tableau no. 2 / Composition no. V, object 633.1967. View source.
- RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, notes to readers of the Mondrian digital catalogue raisonné, explaining A, B and C categories. View source.
- Kunstmuseum Den Haag, conservation education sheet on supports, reuse and temporary colour arrangements in Mondrian's paintings. View source.
- The Museum of Modern Art, Broadway Boogie Woogie object record and medium. View source.
- Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Victory Boogie Woogie object record and materials. View source.
- The Mondrian Papers / RKD, announcement of the digital catalogue raisonné, including its 2018 scope and new attributions. View source.
- Lead image credit. Explore Mondrian paintings by period, subject and identified collection object.
