Paesaggio di dune a Domburg

Mondrian first went to Domburg, a small seaside place in the Dutch province of Zeeland, in 1908. The painter Jan Toorop lived there and drew other artists to the dunes and the light coming off the water, and Mondrian came back summer after summer to the same subjects, the dunes, the church tower, the lighthouse, each time with less description in them and more colour. In October 1911 the Moderne Kunstkring opened its first exhibition in Amsterdam. Mondrian sat on its committee and showed his dune pictures there, in rooms that also held Picasso and Braque. The Dutch critics were rough on him. Within months he had moved to Paris, where he began signing his name Mondrian, with one A instead of two.