Moget was an only child and learned to paint at a young age from Hague School painter Jan Blockpoel by working for him as an assistant. He was talented and was only admitted to the Academy of Visual Arts on Prinsessegracht at the age of 13; He was the youngest student ever. He was fascinated by Piet Mondriaan from an early age and said at the age of fourteen about Jan Sluijters' work: "What we can do with light". In the same year 1942, his first painting, "La Rue", sold.
During the war years, Piet Moget worked under the influence of the Hague School and tried out different techniques. After some travels through Europe, he went to the Academy of Visual Arts in The Hague in 1946 and worked with teachers such as Paul Citroen (Dada, the Bauhaus and the Blaue Reiter) and Rein Draijer (New Objectivity).
However, Moget was even more attracted to the style of Monet and especially Pissarro, as evidenced by the paintings he made during a 1948 visit to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. In 1947 Moget discovered a painting by Geer van Velde 'the Mediterranean Sea' from 1946 that would determine his life and that of Geer van Velde, but that was only later. In the early 1950s, Moget traveled to Lapland with Rudi Polder and would annually visit Sweden and also exhibit work by other artists. In 1952 he and his wife settled in the Languedoc in the town of Port-la-Nouvelle: “la Grange Basse” living in very precarious conditions, without water or electricity. Yet he felt at home here.
From 1954 onwards, the Mediterranean landscape came more and more to the foreground in his work. He plants his easel around “la Grange Basse”, close to the Frescati castle, in the garden of the Rieu, near the cemetery of Port-la-Nouvelle. Faithful to the lessons of the painters of The Hague and Paul Cézanne, he paints his motif. Moget cannot paint indoors; he needs something to hold on to. Nature is actually his master example. In 1955 Geer van Velde came to Cachan to meet Piet Moget. This is how a long friendship was born. Moget considered him his "spiritual father".
In 1956 his 'own' colors became increasingly pearly and iridescent. The contour shape is becoming less pronounced, the horizon is more and more present, the sky is becoming more and more important. From about 1956 onwards, Moget took up the habit of painting on the quay of Port la Nouvelle with a small van. The central theme of his work is the canal, the dam, the sea and space. He worked on his paintings from the beach or the quay in his mini camper. Moget did not need to see the sea directly. Only that thin, almost invisible line between land and sky was enough for him to capture the atmosphere on canvas. After all, the light and the landscape are always different, depending on the brightness, the colors and the time of day. And he has been trying to capture it for years, as below.
Image via Wiki
From 1956 to 1964 he organized "Les Rencontres around Contemporary Art" in Languedoc-Roussillon. These included works by Geer van Velde, Roger Bissière, Nicolas de Staël, Maurice Esteve, Charles Lapicque, André Lanskoy, Serge Poliakoff, Yves Tanguy, Fernand Léger Moget brought together the cobras and many others. Later, Moget also contributed to the creation of the Center for Contemporary Art in Sérignan with exhibitions by Jacques Villon, Joan Miró and exhibitions for other museums. Moget had a knack for it.
