One of the most important figures in the development of abstract art. His early paintings were naturalistic and direct, often delicate in colour, but later his work took on a Symbolist character. Between 1912 and the outbreak of WWI he divided his time between Paris and the Netherlands, and in this period he was strongly influenced by Cubism, painting a series of pictures on the theme of a tree in which the image became progressively more fragmented and abstract. He had also become involved in the theosophical movement, which had an impact on his artistic development. During WWI, he met Theo van Doesburg, with whom he founded De Stijl. He had soon virtually eliminated curved lines from his work, using a structure that was predominantly horizontal and vertical, with the merest suggestion of natural forms underlying the patterning, which he termed Neo-Plasticism.

In 1938, he fled wartime Paris and lived in London near his friends Naum Gabo, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. In 1940, he settled in New York, where he joined American Abstract Artists and continued to publish texts on Neo-Plasticism. His late style evolved significantly in response to the city.