Dutch painter Piet Mondrian has been inspiring designers for many years with his later paintings from his De Stijl genre and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. He painted a lot more than his most famous compositions of geometric grids incorporating primary colors red, blue and yellow (with white and black) but today I want to show you the incredible number of items that play off those particular pieces.
First, two of his most famous paintings shown below for context:
above: Piet Mondrian, Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930
above: Piet Mondrian, Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red, 1921, Tate Gallery. London.
And now the homage to those paintings by designers of all types, with products of all sorts.
above: Yves Saint Laurent's famous 'Mondrian' dress, 1965, residing in Victoria and Albert Museum
above: Kara Ross Mondrian-style clutch bag. (no longer available)
above: Christian Louboutin's Mondrian Wedge (no longer available for purchase)
above: Mondrian tumblers from MoMA
buy them here.
above: Mondrian Wool Area Rug
buy it here.
above: Piet cabinet by Al & Jo
above: Acrylic and wood wall cabinet designed by Athene Galiciadis and Cédric Carles of www.atelier2ce.org
above: Roger Schamay of Atelier Schamay designed this wonderful display cabinet for his Vitra miniature chair collection
above: Foscarini's Teorema floor lamp by Ferruccio Laviani
buy it here.
above: Nike just released these Piet Mondrian SB Dunks last May.
buy them here.
above: Mondrian T-shirt
buy it here.
above: Glass vases by PO
buy them here.
above: the Piet Bowl
Buy it here.
above: stunning lacquer boxes (actually authorized by the Piet Mondrian Hotlzman Trust)
Buy them here.
above: Mondrian style tile coasters
buy them here.
above: Mondrian inspired glass wall clock
Buy it here.
above: The Chromifocus wall mounted fireplace
Buy it here
above: the Piet bathroom cabinet by rqr.estudio was a finalist in the 2004 Cevisama show, but unfortunately has not been mass-produced.
above: Naef Modulon Blocks are clearly inspired by Piet.
Buy them here.
above: The Mondrianum is a tabletop storage box designed as a project by Dmitry Grigoriev for Art.lebedev studios.
Read about it here.
Even technology has gone Mondrian-a. Korean Media Systems has released the ARO, a 1.8-inch portable hard drive. Best known for its mobility and low power consumption, it features a built in Mondrian design, plug-and-play operation, SF-coating stability and LED indicator, USB 2.0 (480 Mbps). Available in 60g, 80g or 100g.
buy it here.
Love Mondrian and you want a Mondrian styled cake? Then contact cake artist Stephanie McLoughlin who made this adorable Mondrian cake:
Stephanie's Cakes.
above: There's even Mondrian Cheese, see it here.
About Piet Mondrian:
b. 1872, Amersfoort, The Netherlands; d. 1944, New York City
Piet Mondrian was born Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan, Jr., on March 7, 1872, in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. He studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, from 1892 to 1897. Until 1908, when he began to take annual trips to Domburg in Zeeland, Mondrian’s work was naturalistic—incorporating successive on influences of academic landscape and still-life painting, Dutch Impressionism [more], and Symbolism [more]. In 1909 a major exhibition of his work (with that of Jan Sluijters and Cornelis Spoor) was held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and that same year he joined the Theosophic Society. In 1909 and 1910 he experimented with Pointillism and by 1911 had begun to work in a Cubist mode. After seeing original Cubist works by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso at the first Moderne Kunstkring exhibition in 1911 in Amsterdam, Mondrian decided to move to Paris. There, from 1912 to 1914, he began to develop an independent abstract style.
Mondrian was visiting the Netherlands when World War I broke out and prevented his return to Paris. During the war years in Holland, he further reduced his colors and geometric shapes and formulated his nonobjective Neoplastic style. In 1917 Mondrian became one of the founders of De Stijl [more]. This group, which included Theo van Doesburg, Bart van der Leck, and Georges Vantongerloo, extended its principles of abstraction and simplification beyond painting and sculpture to architecture and graphic and industrial design. Mondrian’s essays on abstract art were published in the periodical De Stijl. In July 1919 he returned to Paris; there he exhibited with De Stijl in 1923, but withdrew from the group after van Doesburg reintroduced diagonal elements into his work around 1925. In 1930, Mondrian showed with Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square) and in 1931 joined Abstraction-Création.
World War II forced Mondrian to move to London in 1938 and then to settle in New York in October 1940. In New York he joined American Abstract Artists and continued to publish texts on Neoplasticism. His late style evolved significantly in response to the city. In 1942 his first solo show took place at the Valentine Dudensing Gallery, New York. Mondrian died February 1, 1944, in New York.
Related links:
Piet Mondrian
Piet Mondrian Trust
Mondrian Computer Wallpaper
Piet Mondrian prints and posters
Piet Mondrian on Artcyclopedia
A site where there's a large collection of Mondrian artifacts, works of art and more.
Books
above left: published by Taschen. Above right, published by Phaidon
Buy Mondrian Books, gifts and more here.
I continually add to my list of Mondrian inspired items here, it ill be more recently updated than this post, so be sure to check it out!