Essay: What Is the Connection Between Greek Classicism and Mondrian’s Art Works?

ESSAY: What is the connection between Greek CLASSICISM and Mondrian’s art works?

The most obvious connection between Greek classicism and Mondrian’s art works are that both forms of art require a goal to simplify and perfect form. Mondrian’s works, as well as Greek classicism, revolves around the concepts of harmony, balance and mathematically gauged proportions. Both art forms also consider control, order and rationality closely in their concepts.
Firstly, Piet Mondrian, a Dutch painter, was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group in which he evolved a non-representational form he termed Neo-Plasticism. It was a movement of art, sought to express harmony and order by using simplification and mathematically gauged proportions to achieve simplified, perfection of form, based purely on the fundamental principle of geometry and asymmetricality. Historically at the time these artworks were painted, World War 2 was in process, which was also considered a factor that contributed to the promotion of Mondrian’s artworks – By using pure form of art, he promoted a message of desire for control, order, and harmony, in contrast to what was happening at the time.   Most of his work consisted of white backgrounds, upon which was painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colours (blue, yellow and red). It sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order, and to advocate pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour.
"... this new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and colour. On the contrary, it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and colour, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary colour."   The artist once stated about his work.
Secondly, Greek classicism was a short-lived period that ran from 3000 B.C. to 100 B.C, involving an art movement of idealised...