Piet Mondrian
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
50 free Piet Mondrian trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Piet Mondrian is one of the most recognisable painters of the twentieth century. His grids of black lines and bold blocks of colour look simple, yet they were the end of a long journey that began with quiet views of the Dutch countryside and passed through the Paris avant-garde. This quiz collects the fun facts behind the grids: the change he made to his own name, the cartoon he adored, the fears and food rules that puzzled his friends, the homemade furniture, and the painting a museum hung the wrong way for decades. It also follows his look into dresses, record sleeves, sneakers and software. The questions start easy and get harder, so they suit art students, gallery visitors and anyone curious about how a shy, exacting man changed the look of modern design.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A German museum admitted in 2022 that Mondrian's New York City I had hung which way for decades?
Upside down
Upside down is how it has hung since at least 1980. The museum decided to leave it that way, fearing the fragile work could fall apart if it were turned.
Q 02Which Disney cartoon so charmed Piet Mondrian that he signed postcards as one of its characters?
Snow White
Snow White delighted him when he saw it in Paris in early 1938. He later sent his brother Carel a whole series of postcards of the film, signing one Sleepy and calling Carel Sneezy.
Q 03Which French designer's 1965 collection starred shift dresses based on Piet Mondrian's paintings?
Yves Saint Laurent
Yves Saint Laurent made the six cocktail dresses from separate pieces of dyed fabric rather than prints. They were copied so widely that he grew disenchanted with his own hit.
Q 04Which three colours, plus black, white and gray, did Piet Mondrian allow in his mature paintings?
Red, yellow and blue
Red, yellow and blue were the only hues he kept, and he paired them with just two directions: horizontal and vertical. He believed such strict limits could express a universal beauty.
Q 05Piet Mondrian built the seats and tables of his last New York studio from which discarded items?
Fruit crates
Fruit crates that once held oranges and apples became his furniture, painted the same off-white as the walls. He called the studio the best space he had ever lived in.
Q 06Which 1970s TV series featured a tour bus painted in a pattern inspired by Piet Mondrian's grids?
The Partridge Family
The Partridge Family, a singing clan led by a widowed mother, repainted an old 1957 school bus for their concert trips. The series never explains why they chose the pattern.
Q 07Which finished Piet Mondrian painting of 1943 echoes Manhattan's street grid and the jazz piano he loved?
Broadway Boogie Woogie
Broadway Boogie Woogie was bought for $800 by the Brazilian sculptor Maria Martins, who later gave it to the Museum of Modern Art. Its many small squares pulse like city lights.
Q 08Which creature did Piet Mondrian fear so much that he screamed on spotting one at a concert?
A spider
A spider was the culprit: he had dozed off during the music and screamed loudly when he woke and saw it. As a boy he also feared eye injuries so much that he refused to play with his brothers.
Q 09Which letter did Piet Mondrian drop from his Dutch surname after moving to Paris in 1912?
One A
One A went missing: born Mondriaan, he became Mondrian to mark his break with the Netherlands and his arrival in the Parisian avant-garde.
Q 10Which evening pastime was Piet Mondrian's favourite thing to do, from his Amsterdam days onwards?
Dancing
Dancing took him to jazz clubs well into his sixties. Friends were less keen: he waltzed very slowly with his body almost rigid, and one called him a terrible partner.
Q 11Which art movement, named after its own journal, did Piet Mondrian co-found in 1917?
De Stijl
De Stijl was also the title of the group's magazine, and its ideas soon spread from canvas to furniture and architecture. Its geometry went on to influence the Bauhaus and interior design.
Q 12Piet Mondrian broke with his movement in the mid-1920s after its leader championed which kind of line?
Diagonal
Diagonal strokes were more vital than upright ones, his co-founder argued. Mondrian, who allowed only horizontals and verticals, would not accept it and left the group.
Q 13Piet, named after Piet Mondrian, is an esoteric kind of what, written in blocks of colour, not text?
A programming language
Q 21Which artist reviewed a Piet Mondrian exhibition in 1915, then launched a journal with him in 1917?
Theo van Doesburg
Theo van Doesburg edited the magazine and also wrote Dadaist poetry under invented names. The two men's friendship ran mostly by letter until both were living in Paris.
Q 22What name did Piet Mondrian give his theory of pure abstract art, set out in essays from 1917?
Neoplasticism
Neoplasticism first appeared in twelve instalments of his movement's journal in 1917 and 1918. A short French book on the theory, Le Néo-Plasticisme, followed in Paris in 1920.
Q 23Which spiritual movement did Piet Mondrian join in 1909 and credit as the source of his ideas?
Theosophy
A programming language called Piet turns code into pictures that look like abstract art. Its creator wanted to name it Mondrian, but other software had already taken that name.
Q 14Before he turned abstract, what did Piet Mondrian's early Dutch paintings mostly show?
Landscapes
Landscapes filled his early career: windmills, fields and rivers in a naturalistic or Impressionist manner. His first exhibition came in 1893, decades before the famous grids.
Q 15Which event stranded Piet Mondrian in the Netherlands for years during a visit home from Paris?
World War I
World War I broke out while he was visiting in 1914, and he could not return to France until it ended. Cut off from the avant-garde, he began working out an abstract idiom of his own.
Q 16Which art movement did Piet Mondrian embrace in Paris from 1912, then treat as a stepping stone?
Cubism
Cubism, the fractured manner of Picasso and Braque, showed up in his work almost at once. His pictures of 1912 dissolve into geometric shapes and interlocking planes.
Q 17Which doll wore a miniature of the famous 1965 Mondrian dress in a 2018 collector's collection?
Barbie
Barbie modelled it in a set made by Mattel with the couturier's museum, alongside a 1968 safari jacket and a 1983 evening gown. An original dress hangs in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum.
Q 18Which Dutch city's Kunstmuseum holds the world's largest collection of Piet Mondrian's work?
The Hague
The Hague marked his movement's hundredth year by adorning its City Hall with reproductions of his work, calling the result the largest Mondrian painting in the world.
Q 19In which Dutch city was Piet Mondrian born, in a house that is now a museum bearing his name?
Amersfoort
Amersfoort, in the province of Utrecht, keeps his birthplace as the Mondriaan House. Inside is a recreation of the Paris studio he worked in during the 1920s.
Q 20Which illness killed Piet Mondrian in New York in 1944, leaving his last painting unfinished?
Pneumonia
Pneumonia took him at 71, three days after he last worked on the canvas. Nearly 200 mourners came to his memorial, among them Marc Chagall, Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Léger.
Theosophy taught that a deeper knowledge of nature lay beyond the senses, and he spent his life seeking it in paint. He joined the society's Dutch branch and stayed committed.
Q 24To which city did Piet Mondrian move in 1938, leaving Paris in the face of advancing fascism?
London
London kept him for two years, in a Hampstead room found for him by the painter Ben Nicholson. When the bombing began in 1940 he sailed on to America.
Q 25Which profession had Piet Mondrian already qualified for when he entered Amsterdam's art academy?
Schoolteacher
Schoolteacher was his first career: he taught in primary education and painted on the side. His father, a qualified drawing instructor, had introduced him to art early.
Q 26What did Piet Mondrian keep painting in secret into the 1920s, saying it was only for money?
Flowers
Flowers, usually a single bloom, were his private sideline at a time when abstraction made such pictures seem taboo. He had begun painting them around 1900.
Q 27Which subject did Piet Mondrian paint at dusk in 1908, then strip to bare lines in later versions?
A tree
A tree spreads across Evening, the first of a series. In later versions he simplified the branches step by step until little more than vertical and horizontal strokes remained.
Q 28Whose gift bought Piet Mondrian's unfinished last painting for the Netherlands in the late 1990s?
The Dutch Central Bank
The Dutch Central Bank gave the 80 million guilders to mark the coming of the euro. It was then the costliest purchase ever made for a museum in the Netherlands, and parliament asked questions.
Q 29Katherine Dreier ranked Piet Mondrian as Holland's third great painter after Rembrandt and whom?
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh came second in her list, written for a 1926 exhibition in Brooklyn. She had just bought one of Mondrian's diamond-shaped canvases from his Paris studio.
Q 30A 1930 visit to Piet Mondrian's Paris studio pushed which sculptor to embrace abstract art fully?
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder said the visit shocked him. Impressed by the room itself, he soon built the first of the moving sculptures that became his signature.