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Hans Hofmann

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It is the greatest injustice done to Mondrian that people who are plastically blind see only decorative design instead of the plastic perfection which characterizes his work. The whole De Stijl group from which Mondrian's art was derived must be considered a protest against such blindness.
--
"Search for the Real in the Visual Arts", p. 47

 
Hans Hofmann

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His (Mondrian's, ed.) comment was: ‘You have a very strong inner rhythm. You must never lose it’. Then we moved on. Piet Mondrian had said something quiet beautiful to me. Hofmann (famous American abstract art teacher of German origin, ed.) was also excited and enthusiastic about what I was doing at this time (around 1938) but his comment was: ‘This is so good that you would not know it was done by a woman’. His was a double-edged compliment. But Mondrian’s evaluation rides through beautifully.

 
Lee Krasner
 

You know to make his rigid, tedious, boring paintings seem at least a little human, the Mondrian enthusiasts keep insisting that Mondrian was a great tango dancer.

 
Peter Greenaway
 

But when the artist abandons visible appearance, as in Mondrian's black grids on white grounds filled with balancing rectangles of colour, many people feel left behind. And yet the rhythms of Mondrian are those of nature. The harmonies are those which guided proportion in classical buildings and Renaissance churches. Rothko's glowing maroon Seagram Murals at the Tate may, like Turner's late canvases, appear to be "of nothing" but in their brooding depth Rothko suggests another world. As one four year old child said of the Rothko room at the Tate "it makes me think of God".

 
Nicholas Serota
 

For the first time a subject is present, not by virtue of its absence, but actually present,, though its appearance is torn away, and only the structure bared. The Modern City! Precise, rectangular, squared, whether seen from above, below, or on the side; bright lights and sterilized life; Broadway, whites and blacks; and boogie-woogie; the underground music of the at once resigned and rebellious.. ..Mondrian has left his white paradise, and entered the world. (1942, on the painting 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' of Piet Mondrian)

 
Mark Rothko
 

Piet Mondrian realizes the importance of line. The line has almost become a work of art in itself; one can not play with it when the representation of objects perceived was all-important. The white canvas is almost solemn. Each superfluous line, each wrongly placed line, any color placed without veneration or care, can spoil everything – that is, the spiritual.

 
Theo van Doesburg
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