Piet Mondrian was terrible at landscapes. In Chicago's Art Institute the Modern Wing holds one of his pre-masterpieces, a muddy landscape depicting a house and a knobby, dying tree. It looks like an amateur Van Gogh. A kindergarden knock-off. Impressionism, was not Mondrian forte. But, he would eventually find his genius. It was hidden in, of course, those blocks of primary color that are at once so perfect, so hard to get our of your head.

A Mondrian is a favorite for interior design. Instantly recognizable and so graphic, a Mondrian is a painting that seems totally okay to have a reproduction of. The paintings have been reproduced millions of times from pop artists to clothing designers.

But don't write it off as just pop or kitch. There is more to the works that meet the naked eye.

It wasn't until after 1919 that Mondrian started his famous grid paintings. This is a very early time for dabbling in such minimalism, the other artists of his time were busied with cubism and abstract expressionism with it's more messy, sprawling works of abstract art. Minimalism really didn't come into it's own until the 70's or 80's. His careful hand was, indeed, ahead of it's time.

What you might not know about Mondrian's works is that they were meant to represent the spiritual. He talked about his grid paintings representing the duality in nature, dark and light, female and male. He is quoted as saying:

“Nature inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth...I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true.”

So, when you friends act like they know something about your Mondrian reproduction, whip that one out.

A Mondrian work is at once edgy and classic. They are quite agreeable pieces and just might be the perfect gift for any lover of art. I suggest hanging your Mondrian piece on white, bare wall. Somewhere that the viewer can get sucked in and contemplate spirituality, and the dualities of their own life.