Landscape near Arnhem

Piet Mondrian made Landscape near Arnhem in 1900–1901, long before his famous paintings of straight lines and colored squares. He was still a young artist trained in traditional Dutch landscape painting. Mondrian had studied at the art academy in Amsterdam and was exploring watercolor, paint, and pencil. The large size of this work shows that he treated drawing as seriously as painting on canvas. Years later, Cubism and the Dutch group De Stijl led him toward much simpler and more abstract art. The Getty acquired this early landscape in 2020, giving viewers a clear look at where his long journey began.