''Evening; Red Tree'' (''Avond; De rode boom'') is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch artist

Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), known after 1911 as Piet Mondrian (, , ), was a Dutch Painting, painter and Theory of art, art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He w ...

from 1908. It is commonly referred to as ''The Red Tree''. The painting is an

Expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

representation of an apple tree with branches that spread wide across the canvas. ''The Red Tree'' is the first painting in Mondrian’s ''Trees'' series, which defined an important period of evolution in Mondrian’s work as he transitioned to

Neoplasticism Neoplasticism or neo-plasticism, originating from the Dutch , is an avant-garde art theory proposed by Piet Mondrian in 1917 and initially employed by the De Stijl art movement. The most notable proponents of this theory were Mondrian and anoth ...

. Mondrian used ''The Red Tree'' to express his views of nature and reality as a complex equilibrium between harsh motion and quiet stillness. The painting displays non-naturalistic colours and simplified tones of red and blue. The painting is in the collection of the Kunstmuseum,

The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...

Background

Prior to 1907, Mondrian’s works were considered consistent with the trends of the time and were well-received by the public. However, in 1907 Mondrian became unsatisfied and his artwork began to change. Mondrian attended a

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created approximately 2,100 artworks ...

retrospective in 1905 and drew inspiration from van Gogh’s unconventional use of pure colors and gestural brushstrokes. While undergoing his stylistic shift, Mondrian repeatedly used the subject matter of trees, inspired by the poet Émile Veraeren’s "L’Arbre." In the poem, Mondrian saw a shared vision of trees as a powerful source of life connecting the earth and the sky. Notably, Mondrian painted a leafless tree that emphasized strong lines and planes so as to not blur the relationship between the articulate lines of the tree and those of the leaf. Throughout the ''Trees'' series, Mondrian continued to simplify the trees and emphasize strong lines until the trees appear to be merely vertical lines with dispersed horizontal lines as branches, foreshadowing Neoplasticism. Piet Mondriaan

Composition and interpretation

John Milner has observed that the composition focuses on the conflicting and interconnecting forces of trunk, branches, and surrounding space. Mondrian's tree, much like those of van Gogh, rotates in its growth, branching out across the air in smaller, twisting, extensions. Mondrian uses a firm and solid manner of depicting the tree and the space around it, allowing the two components to tightly combine across the flat canvas. The way in which the small branches of the tree stretch up and spread across both sides of the canvas generates a cross-like arrangement with nature. The tree remains in conflict as forces of air and light pull it upwards toward growth and expansion, and gravity pulls it down into dispersal and decay. According to Hans Jaffé, ''The Red Tree'' is not a simple impression of a tree, but rather an interpretation of reality and nature as a whole. Through a linear structure contrasts the tree's violent movement with the overarching calm of the painting to create a balance.

Color and brushwork

Mondrian's style at the time was characterized by his emphasis on color and his revolt against

tonalism Tonalism was an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s when Visual art of the United States, American artists began to paint landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist. Between 1880 and 1915, dark, neutral hues such as g ...

. Restricted to red and blue, ''The Red Tree'' represents Mondrian’s movement toward non-naturalistic colors. He believed that it was not possible to reproduce the colors of nature on a canvas and thus looked to pure color to express nature's beauty differently. He relied on color to create spatial contrast and produce images that were not simply descriptive, but also to create a symbolic and evocative effect. This is seen through the intense and suggestive contrast of the red forcefully standing out from the receding blue. Mondrian also turned to the application of paint to create depth. His rhythmic and opaque application indicates a greater sense of substance both in the tree and the space around it. His strong but somewhat interrupted brushstrokes resemble aspects of

pointillist Pointillism (, ) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" ...

painting. However, rather than creating an optical effect that causes the brushstrokes to blend in the viewer’s eye like in pointillism, Mondrian uses larger brushstrokes and two dominant contrasting colors to remove any sense of natural light and produce a mystical effect.

References

External links

artwork record
on

Europeana Europeana is a web portal created by the European Union containing digitised cultural heritage collections of more than 3,000 institutions across Europe. It includes records of over 50 million cultural and scientific artefacts, brought togethe ...

website {{DEFAULTSORT:Evening Red Tree 1900s paintings Paintings by Piet Mondrian Paintings in The Hague Collection of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag