Farm near Duivendrecht

Farm near Duivendrecht, created by Piet Mondrian Dutch, 1872–1944, is a significant oil on canvas painting that captures the artist during his crucial transition toward pure abstraction. Executed over a lengthy period between 1911 and 1921, this work documents Mondrian’s formal journey as he systematically moved away from the visual traditions of the Netherlands toward an international language of geometric form.

The painting depicts a recognizable, though heavily stylized, rural scene near Amsterdam. Unlike Mondrian’s earlier, strictly representational landscapes, the features in this piece—the farm buildings, trees, and fields—are increasingly simplified and reduced to essential, block-like facets. The artist utilized a somber, earthen palette in the application of oil on canvas, signaling his focus on structure and rhythm rather than descriptive color. This analytical approach, heavily influenced by Cubism, shows the farm structure dissolving into horizontal and vertical lines that anticipate the foundational grid of his later Neoplastic style.

This decade-spanning project illustrates the complexity of the Dutch modernist movement and the painstaking development of Mondrian’s mature vision. The resulting composition of Farm near Duivendrecht functions as a crucial bridge between figurative subject matter and the abstract purity he would achieve by the 1920s.

Today, this key transitional painting is permanently housed within the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. As a vital document detailing the genesis of 20th-century abstraction, the work continues to be studied extensively. High-quality prints derived from this historic canvas are widely available for scholarly reference, documenting the evolution of one of the 20th century’s most important artistic minds.