Stephen Smith at Literary Review:
The maker of abstract grids enclosing lozenges of colour, Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) was one of the two or three epoch-shaping artists of the last century. But his life story isn’t widely known and few of us would be able to identify him from a photograph. Because his work seems cool and smart, and designers have sampled it ad nauseam for that very reason, we tend to imagine that he was probably cool and smart too.
The reality is rather more complex and curious, according to Nicholas Fox Weber’s assiduous and sensitive biography. Mondrian lived alone in a series of rented flats which weren’t much more than bedsits. They were in crowded corners of big cities: Paris, London and New York. He could seldom afford to heat his digs, and he ate sparingly, even when he was entertained by his few loyal supporters. He was a hypochondriac (to be fair to Mondrian, he also enjoyed poor health). He expected his long-suffering friends to console him, but he could be glassily unavailable to them. As with a number of artists, there were difficulties with girls: broadly speaking, Mondrian avoided them, though he appreciated their company as dance partners. This frowningly serious man liked to comb out his toothbrush moustache, climb into an ensemble perilously close to a zoot suit and cut a rug to the latest dance style – the Charleston or the boogie-woogie, say.
more here.
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