Lorenzens-Soil

Sigourney Weaver

“Piet Mondrian⁣The Gray Tree⁣ 1912⁣⁣ “The Gray Tree exemplifies Mondrian’s early transition toward abstraction, and his application of Cubist principles to represent the landscape. The three-dimensional tree has been reduced to lines and planes using a limited palette of grays and black. This painting is one in a series of works Mondrian created, in which the early trees are naturalistically represented, while the later works have become progressively more abstract. In the later paintings, the lines of the tree are reduced until the form of the tree is barely discernible and becomes secondary to the overall composition of vertical and horizontal lines. Here, there is still an allusion to the tree as it appears in nature, but one can already see Mondrian’s interest in reducing the form to a structured organization of lines. This step was invaluable to Mondrian’s development of his mature style of pure abstraction.”⁣⁣