“Mondrian Evolution” – at the Fondation Beyeler until 9 October 2022 – brings together over eighty works by the great master of abstraction (1872-1944). The exhibition is sponsored by La Prairie which, as a partner, also celebrates the culmination of its two-year involvement in support of the Piet Mondrian Conservation Project, which represented an important milestone for the Fondation Beyeler in the conception of this exhibition.
La Prairie continues its long-standing commitment to art and culture by collaborating on this scientific research and conservation project of four pivotal Mondrian paintings, which constitute one of the highlights of “Mondrian Evolution”. The project not only ensured their beauty and visibility for future generations, but also revealed new details about how Mondrian worked and what he thought about making art. Using the latest preservation technology, the project demonstrated how the artist, known as one of the main pioneers of modern abstraction, revisited and revised the paintings, even after several years. He saw painting as a process of seeking the ideal beauty, which he reached through precision and intuition, to evoke total compositional harmony.
Years of research on the artist and the discoveries of the Piet Mondrian Conservation Project, led Ulf Küster, senior curator of the Fondation Beyeler, to reveal Mondrian’s journey towards abstraction as the evolution that the artist himself proclaimed and that is done in surprising ways.Working on the Fondation’s collection – which houses the largest number of Mondrian’s works in Switzerland – as well as on loans from public and private collections, Küster is able to unveil Mondrian’s tireless work to find the essence of painting itself: «Nature was always the guiding principle of his art, the subject of his final realization».
Mondrian’s source of inspiration was nature, even for his most abstract works. A notion that the curator highlights for visitors in each room of the exhibition by presenting the painter’s career in its entirety, rather than focusing only on the latest works, the most recognizable and which have inspired and influenced a myriad of disciplines – rectangles of white , yellow, blue and red framed by black lines. The exhibition reveals that the approach to neoplasticism of this important pioneer of abstraction is full of experimentation and reinterpretation of style and subjects.
The world of La Prairie has been linked to the world of art since its inception: from the artistic effervescence of the Clinique La Prairie in Montreux to the crucial encounter with contemporary artist Niki deSaint Phalle. In its relentless pursuit of timeless beauty initiated by its founder, Paul Niehans, La Prairie continues to stay true to its origins and creates connections with the art world and its various representatives, whether they are cultural institutions, established artists or emerging talents, in order to perpetuate the beauty over the centuries.