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
Bart van der Leck disagreements with Mondrian his abstract style became based on representational images. His painting Tryptich is an example, in which he transformed sketches of a mine in Spain into seemingly abstract shapes. In 1919-1920 he created the interior design for , in the Hoge Veluwe estate. The hunting lodge was designed by Hendrik Petrus Berlage. In 1930, he was commissioned by Jo de Leeuw, owner of the prestigious Dutch department store Metz & Co. to design interiors, window packaging, branding and advertising. For these print materials van der Leck developed a rectilinear, geometrically constructed alphabet. In 1941, he designed a typeface