Mondrian: Paris, and a Better World

In the second of a four-part lecture series, art historian and curator John Walsh discusses the career of the pioneer abstractionist Piet Mondrian (1892–1944). Cubism suggested new possibilities for representing the visual world, which Mondrian explored, step by step, on the way to his own radical solution.

John Walsh, an independent art historian, was Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum from 1983 until 2000. After graduating from Yale and getting his PhD from Columbia, he worked as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and taught art history at Columbia and Harvard. Since he left the Getty he has been teaching part-time at Yale and giving public lectures there. Last fall he gave a three-lecture series at the Hammer on Vincent van Gogh.