Piet Mondrian Process

Review by Dagmar von Freytag-Loringhoven

„Perceiving the idea within reality is true human communion.“
Dr. Rudolf Steiner (1887)¹

Elmar Schrepfer here offers in all modesty what is surely a groundbreaking work in the study of the painter Mondrian (1872-1944). His earlier book on Mondrian, New York City Process – A Picture is Deciphered², published by Urachhaus back in 2011, was an in-depth study of a late work by the artist which revealed the author’s patient, investigative approach. Entirely in keeping with Goethe’s phenomenological method, he showed there in every detail how the picture had arisen, giving readers access to Mondrian’s abstract, linear creations with a depth and scope never previously undertaken.

In the present, substantially expanded book, he takes us on a deep foray into the painter’s developing ideas – and into the experience of his unswerving realisation of these ideas in pictures. In so doing he makes new discoveries which convincingly demonstrate the underlying aim behind Mondrian’s seemingly so abstract formulations, whose radical implications here come to clear and definite expression. A fascinating, clearly articulated essay on deciphering Mondrian’s late work leaves us free, does not insist on its interpretations, and for that very reason casts its spell on the interested art lover.

Through a series of works, Elmar Schrepfer leads his readers into Mondrian’s artistic development in such a way that we can follow and empathise with his artistic path towards radical abstraction. We learn, at first hand as it were, how Mondrian gradually detached himself from representational forms and arrived at the formulation of relationships that become apparent in the dissolution of such forms and their compression into horizontals, verticals and planes. Thus we journey “from depiction of the visible to an experience of the invisible”.

Altogether, the book offers interested readers much stimulus for approaching Mondrian the artist in a variety of ways. One important moment in his biography seems to be his embrace of theosophy, with which he increasingly felt connected from the age of 28 (1900). The few books still in Mondrian’s possession by the time of his death in 1944 included the transcript of a series of lectures given by Rudolf Steiner in Holland in 1908 under the auspices of the Theosophical Society. Though Mondrian spoke only sparingly about his preoccupation with theosophical and anthroposophical themes, they were very important to him, informing his outlook and playing a key part in his works. It seems almost tragic that a letter which Mondrian wrote to Steiner in 1921 and to which he attached a small booklet about his ideas, Le Neo-Plasticisme, along with a request for Steiner’s view of it, unfortunately remained unanswered.

The essay by Michael Debus, containing reflections on “The Letter from Piet Mondrian to Rudolf Steiner”, engages with this incident and places it in a broader context. Here too, Mondrian becomes (more) understandable in his inner journey, in which spiritual questions were a major preoccupation. The pictorial ideas that take shape through Mondrian’s philosophy appear here in a new light in relationship to theosophy and anthroposophy. They are dedicated to the “people of the future” for “Art is the means to be spiritual”.³  The universal and the individual, spirit and nature touch upon one another and interpenetrate in the painter’s formulation.

In several key encounters with his contemporaries, recorded for posterity, it becomes apparent how intensively Mondrian engaged with spiritual questions. Several striking statements by him illustrate how he engaged with the ideas of the mathematician and theosophist M. H. J. Schoenmaeker (1875-1944). The Dutch art movement De Stijl, founded in 1917, brought together artists who developed a new, mathematically-based pictorial language reduced to only a few pictorial elements, a rigorous school that exerted great influence on the Bauhaus in Weimar and an approach which Mondrian realised in his pictures with great consistency.

Subsequently the author examines two exemplary pictures in detail. Lozenge Composition with two lines (1931) and Composition II with Black Lines (1930), created in black on white, dispense with colours altogether and are so reduced in scope that, to a cursory view, their expressive power is due only to their severity and the balance of their lines. In his previous analysis of the picture New York City III, Elmar Schrepfer had elaborated and illustrated numerical relationships; now he ascribes occult, numerical meanings to the dimensions of planes and lines, which strongly suggest an intentionally executed pictorial idea underlying the abstract image.

Following this absolute reduction of means, which appears as a turning point in Mondrian’s oeuvre, Elmar Schrepfer leads his readers on to the painter’s use of colour in his late works. The chapters, “Three Rhombi, Wisdom through Inner Development” and “Meditative Reflection on the New York City III-Process in Seventeen Steps” show how Mondrian takes up colours again and integrates them in his compositions while still retaining the severity of his designs: here non-colour (the immutable, spiritual principle) and the colour elements (the mutable and natural) play into one another and give rise to pictorial works that seem almost buoyant and musical.

A concluding essay by Gabriele Arndt, “An Example from Contemporary Art – from the painting studio of Reinhard Martin Rumpf”, describes ways of approaching the colour relationships used, alongside the constructional language of lines and planes, as design elements in Mondrian’s abstract pictures. She traces the deciphering of the painting New York City III in terms of Goethe’s theory of colours and Rudolf Steiner’s spiritually extended teachings on colour, revealing the key significance of the colours used by Mondrian. Drawing on several works by the painter R. M. Rumpf, she develops a broader understanding for the rigour of the artist’s choice of colours.

Where do we stand as readers by the end of this fascinating journey through the world of the painter? It becomes keenly apparent that levels of perception and insight have shifted. Our gaze is redirected from the dismantling of representational elements into abstraction – which appears somewhat austere initially in the sparseness of Mondrian’s pictorial language – to his underlying development of thoughts and ideas. Our understanding is awoken for forms of art which, emerging from this mode of thinking, now appear consistent and coherent. Besides a felt equilibrium, the few lines and planes in each picture now reveal to us the painter’s whole philosophy: “By turning away from the surface of things, we come closer to the inner laws of matter, which are also those of the spirit.”sind.“⁴

This book activates and enlivens us; it takes us with it on a fascinating art trip with a surprising outcome. Surveying all the separate steps of insight leads us to a whole; the ideas assume form within us, and in attentive tracing of the path outlined here, we ourselves become investigators.

Dagmar von Freytag-Loringhoven
Art therapist M. A. BVAKT/DFKGT
Social care supervisor

¹ Steiner, Rudolf (1887): GA 1 Goethes naturwissenschaftliche Schriften [‘Goethe’s Scientific Writings’], Dornach 1987, 4. Auflage, S. 111.
² Schrepfer, Elmar: Piet-Mondrian New York City-Process, Stuttgart 2011
³ Piet Mondrian, quoted in: www.brainyquote.com/quotes/piet_mondrian_718927, accessed on 3.8. 22 by D. v. Freytag-Loringhoven. Translation (into German) by D. Hornemann-v. Laer, 2019 in: Bockemühl, Michael: “Kunst sehen. Piet Mondrian.” Info 3 Verlag
⁴ Piet Mondrian, quoted in: www.brainyquote.com/quotes/piet_mondrian_718906, accessed on 3.8. 22 by D. v. Freytag-Loringhoven. Translation (into German) by D. Hornemann-v. Laer, 2019. Ibid.

A reflection by Heide Metzdorf

For a good while now I have followed Elmar Schrepfer on his journey of deciphering compositions by Piet Mondrian.

I too have been gripped by a fascination for Mondrian, but have never been able to fully credit what art historians say about him.

Reading these texts, in conversations and during sometimes vehement discussions, I have come to be fully convinced that Elmar Schrepfer has indeed put his finger on the secret of these undoubtedly fascinating works: a small revolution in the closed shop of the art world and therefore a project well-worth supporting.

Heide Metzdorf, Aichtal
Artist