Photography becomes a way of reading Mondrian’s self-image, his studios, and the public perception of his work.

Mondrian and Photography: Picturing the Artist and His Work presents Piet Mondrian not only through his paintings, but through the photographic traces of his life and practice. The volume gathers around 400 photographs of Mondrian, his studios, exhibitions, encounters, travels, and private situations. Rather than functioning as a conventional biography, it forms a visual archive of the artist’s changing image.

A central focus lies on Mondrian’s studios in Amsterdam, Paris, London, and New York. These spaces appear not only as places of work, but as carefully arranged environments in which his artistic thinking becomes spatially visible. Walls, furniture, paintings, and coloured elements form a distinctive order, turning the studio itself into part of his artistic self-representation.

The chronologically structured image section shows how Mondrian’s appearance, surroundings, and public persona developed over time. Formal portraits are shown alongside snapshots from journeys, visits, openings, and social gatherings. Photographs by André Kertész, Cas Oorthuys, László Moholy-Nagy, Arnold Newman, and others show how photography contributed to shaping Mondrian’s image within modern art history.

Detailed captions and illustrated essays examine the role of photography in relation to Mondrian’s work. The book shows how photographic images functioned as documentation, self-presentation, and historical transmission, making Mondrian and Photography a substantial reference on the visual construction of one of the central figures of modernism.