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Why did Piet Mondrian move to Paris in 1912?
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Piet Mondrian
Mondrian, photograph by Arnold Newman, 1942.
Piet Mondrian moved to Paris in 1912 because he was profoundly impressed by the early Cubist works of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, which he had seen for the first time in 1911.1
At the time, the Dutch avant-garde was seeking to move beyond traditional landscape painting by incorporating new visual ideas, such as those pioneered by Paul CĂ©zanne and the Cubists. Influenced by these trends, Mondrian relocated to the Montparnasse district to further explore and adapt the precepts of Cubism to his own artistic practice.1