Forgive me of saying so, but good things just have to grow very slowly. I say this in connection with your [Doesburg's] plans.. ..for launching a jou… - Piet Mondrian

[jazz and Neo-Plasticism are] highly revolutionary phenomena: they are destructive constructive. They do not destroy the actual content of form, but rather deepen form only in order to elevate it to a new order. They break the bonds of 'form as individuality' in order to make possible a universal unity.

With that work [Mondrian is referring to his figurative painting 'Devotion' he painted in 1908, of a devotedly looking girl] I only envisaged a girl conceived devotedly.. ..and by giving the hair that sort of red, to tone down the material side of things, to suppress any thoughts about 'hair', 'costume', etc, and to stress the spiritual. I believe that color and line can do much towards this end; moreover, I should not wish to do without line.. .It is precisely the overall line of a thing which I find fundamentally important, and also, the colour.

The abstract human mind will have to receive the intended impression by its own means. I always confine myself to expressing the universal, that is, the eternal (closest to the spirit) and I do so in the simplest of external forms, in order to be able to express the inner meaning as lightly veiled as possible.