Already in 1993-1994, as I was working on the exhibition Piet Mondrian 1892-1914. The Amsterdam Years in the Amsterdam City Archives – now housed in the building designed by Mondrian’s co-theosophist Karel de Bazel – I had several talks with my colleague Robert Welsh about the horoscope. I wondered which insights Mondrian had drawn from it, concerning his personality and his career. Judging from the vast network I uncovered during my investigations, it had become clear that Mondrian was not the stiff, introverted man he has always been judged to be. A better characterization would be: a solitary person among his fellow people, someone who weaved in and out of social circles in a receptive and playful, but at the same time reserved, independent and reflexive way. ‘Piet, now you see him, now you don’t’, was the jokey description of him at gallery openings in Paris.
Yesterday, on 7 March 2013, the birthday of Mondrian, the website www.mondriaan.nl was
launched. Posthumously Mondrian received an impressive and modern
birthday present. In another way Mondrian himself celebrated his
birthday on 7 March 1908 by treating himself to the lecture Rudolf
Steiner gave in Amsterdam. He kept the Dutch transcription of Steiner’s
lectures all his life, together with his horoscope. Apparently they
meant much to him.