I often dined at Heintje Smit-Boog’s guesthouse in 1916.
Around 1916, Piet Mondrian was a frequent dinner guest at a pension run by Heintje Smit-Boog and her husband. His fellow regulars included the composer Jakob van Domselaer, the writer Jan Greshoff, the poets Martinus Nijhoff and Adriaan Roland Holst, and the philosopher Mathieu Schoenmakers.
Christosophy
Schoenmaekers, in particular, was important for Mondrian. The Laren-based philosopher had developed his own blend of theosophy and Christianity, which he called “Christosophy”. Mondrian initially regarded Schoenmaekers as an interesting conversation partner and read at least two of his books, The New Image of the World (1915) and Principles of Plastic Mathematics (1916).
“Dominated”
After visiting Laren in February 1916, Theo van Doesburg wrote to a friend:
“I got the impression that Van Domselaar and Mondriaan are wholly dominated by Dr. Schoenmaekers’ ideas. […] The whole basis of his ideas is mathematical. He considers mathematics to be the only pure basis and the only pure measure for our emotions. Therefore in his estimation a work of art must always have a mathematical foundation. Mondrian applies this by using the two purest forms for the expression of feeling, that is to say the horizontal and vertical line.”
Neo-plasticism
Mondrian did indeed take inspiration from Schoenmaekers’ ideas about mutual oppositions, thinking in terms of relations, and the effects of primary colours, and he may have derived the term nieuwe beelding (translated as “neo-plasticism”) from Schoenmaekers’ term beelding (“image creation”) in his book The New Image of the World.
“Not the right kind of fellow”
Their intellectual kinship was short-lived, however. In 1917, Mondrian wrote, “I am angry with Schoenmakers. He is not the right kind of fellow after all.” Mondrian cast doubt on Schoenmakers’ theories and on closer inspection deemed his ideas about art “outrageous” and the man himself an “awful fellow”.