Mondrian not Mondriaan
Petition
When Piet Mondrian moved to Paris in January 1912, he officially changed his name. He dropped an "a" from "Mondriaan", as he wanted to distance himself from his Dutch roots and form the very appropriate anagram “I Paint Modern”.
Despite his deliberate name change, in the Netherlands Mondrian still goes by the name Mondriaan. This is being maintained and further propelled by the museums and cultural institutions who continue to refer to the artist as Mondriaan.
We, the undersigned, believe this is wrong. It is a postcolonial mindset that disrespects the wishes of this groundbreaking artist, whose influence on Dutch and modern western culture is hard to overstate.
We, the undersigned, would like to ask the Kröller-Müller Museum, the Rijksmuseum, the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and the Mondriaan Fonds for Mondrian to be called Mondrian, like everywhere else in the world, out of respect for the artist.
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