" To present times, this style makes his works distinct from others. .

             Some individuals are born with artistic technique. Without having to think about it or take lessons, they automatically have the innate ability to make the canvas come alive with their visual concept. Not so with Mondrian, explains Kutner. Breakthroughs do not always arrive like thunderbolts, even for brilliant artists. He showed few signs of exceptional talent in his youth. Rather he seemed something of a plodder, deeply rooted in the landscape tradition of his native Holland and tethered to the rural society in which he was raised. So, he kept at it. "Experience was my only teacher," Mondrian said. "The artist, born of the past, advances as far as his intuition permits" (Kutner).

             According to the article "Painter's Canvas Was Limitless; Follow Your Vision: Mondrian's dedication to his art was no abstraction," much of his success was due to his continual desire to show the harmony of the universe to others. It was a daunting goal, but he never gave up. Instead, he toiled in poverty for decades until hitting on the perfect pictorial language for his vision. As a result, says Alejandro Anreus, an art history professor at William Paterson University in New Jersey, "Mondrian's impact on modern art is extraordinary. He opened up avenues of art that are still being explored today." .

             Not believing that the Cubists had gone far enough in their approach, Mondrian radically scaled back the colors and shapes in his work. He also rejected creating an illusion of space on the canvas, "as if viewers were looking through a window upon a 3-Dimensional scene," says Rochelle Newman, professor of fine arts at Merrimack College in Mass. Instead, he went the other way, playing up the flatness and opacity of the canvas. One of the reasons for this abstraction, adds Anreus, was as a process of purification from the horrors and devastation of World War I.