Composition with Red Blue and Yellow De Stijl. An encounter with fellow Dutch artist Bart van der Leck provided ground for Mondrian to exchange ideas. From van der Leck he received the concept of painting flat areas of pure color; a solution to Mondrian’s problem of coloring - he was then using color in what he considered an Impressionist way, which was too restless and emotional. In return, van der Leck adopted Mondrian’s concept of crossed vertical and horizontal lines as a basis for composition. These two technical elements are consistent throughout all of Mondrian’s work. Shortly after the formation of Mondrian and van der Leck’s
Piet Mondrian his painting with his spiritual pursuits, and in 1913 he began to fuse his art and his theosophical studies into a theory that signaled his final break from representational painting. While Mondrian was visiting the Netherlands in 1914, World War I began, forcing him to remain in there for the duration of the conflict. During this period, he stayed at the Laren artists' colony, where he met Bart van der Leck and Theo van Doesburg, who were both undergoing their own personal journeys toward abstraction. Van der Leck's use of only primary colors in his art greatly influenced Mondrian. After