How did the Dutch Luminist movement influence Piet Mondrian’s paintings?

The Dutch Luminist movement, led by Jan Toorop, significantly influenced Piet Mondrian by encouraging him to adopt a palette restricted to primary hues and to explore the representation of radiant light. As an offshoot of French Neo-Impressionism, the Luminists utilized short lines or dots of primary colours to render light, a technique Mondrian mastered in works such as Windmill in Sunlight (1908).1

However, Mondrian’s engagement with Luminism went beyond mere imitation. He utilized the movement's focus on colour to express his own visual concerns, specifically the pursuit of equilibrium between contrasting hues and the balance of movement within a composition, as seen in The Red Tree (1908). This period was pivotal in establishing Mondrian as a member of the Dutch avant-garde and served as a bridge toward his later development of neoplasticism, where he eventually moved away from naturalistic representation toward the purely abstract use of geometry and primary colours to convey a spiritual message.12