Recently the Netherlands Institute for Art History acquired the Harry Holtzman Estate on Piet Mondrian. Among the very few documents Mondrian preserved until his death is an interesting one: the horoscope Mondrian had drawn for him late 1911-early 1912.
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.
During the last four years I have been researching the life of Grete Trakl (1891-1917), sister of the well-known Austrian 'expressionist' poet Georg Trakl (1887-1914). Although Georg has been a research topic ever since he died, the biography of his favorite sister Grete, with whom he is said to have had an incestuous relationship, has been remarkably sketchy. Until now.
