How did Piet Mondrian adapt Cubism to create his own artistic style?

Piet Mondrian adapted Cubism by initially adopting its geometric structures and limited color palette of ochre, brown, and gray to reduce subjects like trees and architectural facades to general formulas. While he initially followed the Cubist scheme of central focus and geometric division, he progressively pushed toward total abstraction by eliminating curved lines and diagonal accents in favor of strictly vertical and horizontal lines.1

Mondrian moved beyond the Cubist tendency to break objects into component parts, instead seeking to transcend the depiction of individual objects entirely. Influenced by theosophical concepts regarding the mathematical construction of the universe, he refined his formal vocabulary to achieve a "pure" reality. This evolution culminated in Neoplasticism, a style that rejected representational subject matter in favor of a nonrepresentational language consisting solely of straight lines, primary colors, and the neutrals of black, white, and gray. Through this process, Mondrian transformed the canvas from a space for depicting nature into a site for expressing universal harmony.1234