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
Jan van der Heyden life elements, has been identified as an important influence on this composition. In particular, like in Dou's composition, van der Heyden's still life scene depicts a wide range of objects of an artistic as well as a scientific nature. These objects reference the passion of contemporary scholars for putting together collections of miscellaneous objects. The objects in van der Heyden's "Still Life with Globe, Books, Sculpture, and Other Objects" were apparently selected to evoke the two intellectual attributes of the active and contemplative life. The contemplative life is the life of art, philosophy and theology while the active life is