Paintings Of Piet Mondrian And Francis Bacon

By Darren Hartley


At the start of the 20th century, the Piet Mondrian paintings marked a transition to Neo-Impressionism and Cubism from the Hague school and Symbolism. As a representation of the universal and dynamic pulse of life, they were compositions of the most fundamental aspects of line and color.

The first Universal Piet Mondrian paintings were consistent with the time period, taking a cue from the Post Impressionistic works of Van Gogh. Piet also took inspirations from Braque and Picasso, although he subsequently formed a very distinct style, all his own. There are several instances of a definite Post-impressionist and emotive use of color in his early paintings.

It was to help humanity that Piet Mondrian paintings were aimed at. This help was extended through the provision of aesthetic beauty and breaking away from a representational form of painting. The early Piet Mondrian paintings were representational paintings. Slowly, they evolved into cubism, then to pure abstraction and non-representation. Finally they flourished into pure creative freedom, felt in the post-WWI war atmosphere of Paris.

The first truly original work among the Francis Bacon paintings was the Crucifixion, a small spectral painting clearly indebted to the biomorphs of Picasso. In 1944, Francis Bacon riveted the attention of both public and critics with his Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. With its hot orange background and stone-colored monsters of vaguely human descent, the painting left a lasting and disquieting impression on its viewers.

Francis Bacon paintings turned traditional paintings of people inside out, with grotesquely distorted faces and twisted body parts. Some of the most famous of these paintings were inspirations from the old master artworks, including Head VI, based on the Portrait of Pope Innocent X by the Spanish artist, Diego Velazquez.

There are a number of Francis Bacon paintings that stood apart in exhibitions. A prime example would be Head VI, a 1949 creation. Featuring a sensuous purple cape, it was actually a variation on Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X. With obsessive integrity, Francis mined the theme throughout the succeeding decade. This dependency on other artists' work was expressed in the form of reproductions. Rather than limiting Francis, it actually encouraged him to take on extravagant licensing in his art.




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