Irises

Piet Mondrian

Oil on canvas

Kunstmuseum Den Haag

Irises is a still-life painting by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian depicting a vase of iris flowers, executed in oil on canvas around 1910. The work belongs to a sustained series of floral studies Mondrian produced during his Amsterdam period, in which he explored botanical subjects with a simplified, increasingly flattened pictorial approach that hints at his emerging interest in formal abstraction. Born in Amersfoort in 1872, Mondrian trained at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam and moved through Impressionism, Symbolism, and Post-Impressionist influence before developing the radical geometric abstraction for which he became internationally renowned. This painting represents a transitional moment in his career, when theosophical ideas were beginning to reshape his attitude toward natural forms and the possibility of a spiritually grounded visual language.