“Mondrian began with his paintings of the seashore, with blue trees and the cathedral. These paintings were totally symbolist paintings... Until the very end Mondrian remains a Symbolist and an Expressionist.”

— Anselm Kiefer

(1986) n.p.
Structures are no longer valid', in "Ein Gespräch..."

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Anselm Kiefer 20

German painter and sculptor 1945

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“[to Mondrian:] Maybe you should take all these red, yellow and blue elements off the canvas and let them hang in the air, so they can move. [Mondrian reacted: 'Well, I think my paintings are fast enough already..”

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Quote (1930), from a studio-visit at Mondrian's place in Paris, as cited by by Mondrian's recent biographer Hans Janssen, of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague; as cited by Alastair Sooke, in 'Mondrian - the Joy of Being Square'; BBC culture, 10 July 2017 http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170710-mondrian-the-joy-of-being-square
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“Mondrian? His mind was too subtle. He worked in the light. I work in the darkness... Mondrian is the Buddha of painting. I saw him once. You wondered how a man could radiate such charisma.”

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“We believe that we can find the end, and that a painting can be finished. The Abstract Expressionists always felt the painting's being finished was very problematical. We'd more readily say that our paintings were finished and say, well, it's either a failure or it's not, instead of saying, well, maybe it's not really finished.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Quote from an interview, 1966; as quoted in Minimal Art, a Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock, University of California Press, Berkeley 1968, p. 157-161
Quotes, 1960 - 1970

“Seeking an English equivalent for peinture relative, Fritz Glarner settled on the term 'relational painting' towards the end of 1946, which he applied retrospectively to some of his earlier paintings and all his subsequent works. It was a term that suited the kind of abstract painting he pursued, focused on relating geometric shapes and ground through colour in ways which would make shape and ground alternate to produce what he called 'pumping planes'. While acknowledging the influence of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), with whom he was closely associated in New York, Glarner replaced the balancing of horizontality and verticality achieved in Mondrian's painting with interlocking rectangles and wedges that expand out towards the edges of the canvas.”

Dore Ashton (1928–2017) art critic

Dore Ashton, "Fritz Glarner," Art International, vol. 7, no. 1, January 1963, p.51; Republished in: National Gallery of Australia, ‎Michael Lloyd, ‎Michael Desmond (1992). European and American Paintings and Sculpturee 1870-1970 in the Australian National Gallery, p. 246

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“Perhaps he [ Mondrian ] was too faithful to a single discovery. And perhaps that kind of painting was right for the period. But now peace and harmony are no longer possible. There is only anguish.”

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“My entrance into the field of abstract art came about as the result of a visit to the studio of Piet Mondrian in Paris in 1930. I was particularly impressed by some rectangles of color he had tacked on his wall in a pattern after his nature. I told him I would like to make them [Mondrian's flat painting] oscillate, he objected. I went home and tried to paint abstractly - but in two weeks I was back again among plastic materials.”

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“In Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Fauves – Matisse, Derain – were using bright colours in their full intensity, which continued with Kandinsky, Malevich, Kirchner, Léger and Mondrian. They employed all the colours of the spectrum. In the 1940's and 1950's the majority of the Abstract Expressionists in New York rebelled against this European use of colour and mostly used mixed colours. That is, the Abstract Expressionists did use bright colours sometimes, but they tended to paint wet-on-wet, which muddled their hues. As Matisse would say, a small patch of any one colour is far less intense than a large one of the same colour. I returned in 1954 [from Paris] to New York and showed paintings done in France at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1956 with bright colours that wouldn’t really be used until the Pop artists in the 1960's. My idea of using colour at its full intensity, which began with Colors for a Large Wall, hasn’t changed in the 60 years that I’ve been painting.”

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Source: 'Colour Chart I', interview with Christoph Grunenberg, 1 May 2009; 'Sixty years at full intensity', Tate 2009

“Mondrian began with his paintings of the seashore, with blue trees and the cathedral. These paintings were totally symbolist paintings... Until the very end Mondrian remains a Symbolist and an Expressionist.”

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