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Why did Piet Mondrian reintroduce black lines into his paintings in 1918?
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Piet Mondrian
Mondrian, photograph by Arnold Newman, 1942.
In 1918, Piet Mondrian reintroduced black lines into his paintings to link his color planes to one another and to the background. By utilizing a series of black vertical and horizontal strips, he was able to create distinct rectangles of color or non-color, further refining his Neoplasticism style. This development helped him move toward his goal of rendering a "true vision of reality" by deriving compositions from abstract rules of geometry and color rather than from fragments of the external world.1