Field with Young Trees in the Foreground

c. 1907

Field with Young Trees in the Foreground, c. 1907. Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872–1944). Oil on paper laid on board; framed: 82.5 x 97 x 5.8 cm (32 1/2 x 38 3/16 x 2 5/16 in.); unframed: 65.7 x 72 cm (25 7/8 x 28 3/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Frank Stella 1971.220 This painting depicts a field around the hamlet of Oele in the eastern Netherlands, where Mondrian lived during the summer of 1907. The evocative mood created by the trees silhouetted against a twilight sky suggests that Mondrian’s search for spirituality was present before he began painting completely abstract or non-objective compositions in 1916. Guided by readings in metaphysics and philosophy, Mondrian sought to achieve a higher spiritual reality in his paintings, which eventually led him to eliminate all representational elements in favor of a style of pure geometric abstraction. Mondrian was a prolific writer drawn to spiritual studies and he believed that art and philosophy were deeply interconnected.