The 20th century is distinguished in art history for one invention above all: abstraction. The Dutch artist Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) was a pioneer in this development. His reputation rests on about 250 abstract paintings dating from 1917 to 1944, a modest number for over 25 years of work. Each painting was worked and reworked, built layer by layer toward an equilibrium of form, color, and surface.

Mondrian named his style "neoplasticism." That is how he translated his own Dutch phrase nieuwe beelding, which also means "new form" or "new image." The style was based, he explained, on an absolute harmony of straight lines and pure colors underlying the visible world.