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The Mauritshuis
UK Wednesday 9, July 2014 56 225 sq. cm ABC 1709082 Daily page rate £32,508.00, scc rate £129.00 020 7938 6000
Art is all around you in inspiring Holland by David Atkinson HIS summer, British galleries are honouring Piet Mondrian. The Dutch abstract artist, famous for his vivid linear designs, died 70 years ago and exhibitions of his work are on at the Turner Contemporary, Margate and Tate Liverpool. I want to see where it all began, so I am travelling by train from Amersfoort near Utrecht, where Mondrian was born in 1872, to The Hague, where many of his works hang. This canal-side town is full of tiny, bright streets and wave-lapping waterways. The Mondriaanhaus, where the family lived until 1880, is now a museum devoted to the man’s life and work. It includes early paintings and a mock-up of his Paris apartment-studio, where he lived and worked from 1919 to 1938. Later that day, in Utrecht, I wander the streets of the 12th-century old city, exploring the medieval passageways around Dom
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Square and the cloistered gardens of Dom Cathedral. In Café Olivier, a buzzy spot serving local wheat brews, there are nods to Mondrian’s love of colour and form. The Gemeentemuseum at my next stop, The Hague, houses the world’s largest collection of Mondrian’s work — some 298 items, from dreamlike landscapes to work inspired by his move to New York in 1940. I spend a lazy morning perusing the artworks, and catch the tram back to the old town to marvel at the Gothic buildings around the central square, Buitenhof. Nearby, at the recently re-opened Mauritshuis, you can see Vermeer’s masterpiece Girl With A Pearl Earring. Dinner that night is at Catch by Simonis, a
is at Turner Contemporary, Margate, until September 21 (turnercontemporary.org). Mondrian And His Studios is at Tate Liverpool till October 5 (tate.org.uk/visit/tate-liverpool). More information at holland.com.
Lap Lap it it up: up: The The waterways waterways of of Utrecht Utrecht
harbourside fish restaurant in the Scheveningen area — a huddle of lively bars and restaurants at the far end of Strandweg, an expansive seaside promenade. On the way back to my hotel, the primary colours of the shop signs and slick lines of the tram tracks are reflected in postdownpour puddles. It could be that I’ve overdosed on the artist — or maybe Mondrian simply is in Holland’s landscape.
TRAVEL FACTS BRITISH Airways (0844 493 0787, ba.com) flies to Rotterdam The Hague from London City airport from £98 return. Mondrian And Colour
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