Girl Writing 1895

Piet Mondrian made this drawing, Girl Writing, with pencil on paper. It depicts a woman writing at a desk in a domestic setting, her gaze lowered. The work is a study in social realism, a genre that had become popular in the Netherlands during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Artists used these intimate scenes of working-class life to comment on the social structures of their time. Mondrian's choice to depict a woman writing is significant. In an era of rapidly expanding public education, literacy had become a mark of both social mobility and self-determination. The image suggests a sense of empowerment and agency at a time when those opportunities were only beginning to open up for women. By consulting historical records and cultural studies of the Netherlands, we can begin to understand more about the social context of the artwork. The true meaning of art is contingent on social and institutional contexts.