|The late hard-edged paintings by both of these artists inform each other, but the calligraphic-like images show another alignment of thought leading to a similar solution.|
While reviewing some black and white photos of painting exhibits from the late 1930’s that featured the work of Piet Mondrian, I was struck by the resemblance of the paintings from this period to calligraphy. Frankly, it appeared to be very much in the genre of Japanese art where the calligraphy is the art. In these old photos, the blocks of color become black fill for horizontal and vertical lines of varying widths, with many appearing to be some unknown and cryptic alphabet.
Ad Reinhardt 1940s
The similarity to work by Ad Reinhardt from 1948 to 1951 was pretty striking, and not something I had noticed before. The late hard-edged paintings by both of these artists inform each other, but the calligraphic-like images show another alignment of thought leading to a similar solution. With so much focus on Mondrian’s later, iconic work, other than a 1987 catalog from a Mondrian exhibit in Japan, his calligraphic works don’t appear to have been much reproduced. Nor have I seen examples on display at museums with respectable collections of Mondrian’s paintings.
Piet Mondrain – Compostion with Grid #1
And while we’re talking about curious similarities between artists, Piet Mondrian created a series of paintings in 1919 that appear to me as precursors to work by Sol Lewitt. Specifically, Composition with Grid 1 and Composition with Grid 4 (called lozenge paintings; a square canvas with the corner oriented to the top). For Mondrian’s development, these paintings are the bridge between earlier geometric paintings and the later, more famous paintings of irregular grids with blocks of primary colors.
As Mondrian was trying to reconcile the linear depictions of ocean waves and building facades with his irregular blocks of colors, this series provided a more satisfying result than paintings like Composite in Kleur B from 1917. Yet these Mondrian works can be difficult to associate visually with the later and more famous paintings he is known by today. Similarly, it can be argued that Lewitt’s early efforts with strict cube forms also led to later works featuring pyramids and random forms, far removed from the dogmatic images associated with minimalism. Interesting that Mondrian moves from loose, figurative works to precise geometric paintings of lines and grids while Lewitt moves from precise black and white works informed by the cube to loose, color-filled images of wavy bands and irregular shapes.