Piet Moget (Den Haag 1928 - 2015 Port-la-Nouvelle) was an only child and learned to paint at a young age from the Hague School painter Jan Blockpoel by working as an assistant for him. He was talented and was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts on Prinsessegracht in The Hague at the age of 13, making him the youngest student ever. He was captivated by Piet Mondriaan and, at the age of fourteen, remarked about Jan Sluijters' work, "What we can do with light." In that same year, 1942, he sold his first painting, "La Rue."
During the war years, Piet Moget experimented with various techniques under the influence of the Hague School. After traveling in Europe, he attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague in 1946, where he studied under teachers like Paul Citroen (Dada, Bauhaus, and Blaue Reiter) and Rein Draijer (Nieuwe zakelijkheid).
However, Moget was more drawn to the style of Monet and, especially, Pissarro, as reflected in the paintings he created during a visit to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 1948. In 1947, Moget discovered a painting by Geer van Velde, "Mediterranean Sea" from 1946, which would influence his life and that of Geer van Velde, although that realization came later. In the early 1950s, Moget traveled to Lapland with Rudi Polder and exhibited annually in Sweden with works by other artists. In 1952, he and his wife settled in Languedoc in the village of Port-la-Nouvelle, in "La Grange Basse," where they lived in very basic conditions, without water or electricity. Nevertheless, he felt at home there.
From 1954, the Mediterranean landscape increasingly became the focus of his work. He set up his easel around "La Grange Basse," close to Frescati Castle, in the garden of the Rieu, near the cemetery of Port-la-Nouvelle. Staying true to the teachings of The Hague painters and Paul Cézanne, he painted his subjects. Moget could not paint indoors; he needed something to anchor him, and nature was his ultimate teacher. In 1955, Geer van Velde came to Cachan to meet Piet Moget, and a long-lasting friendship developed. Moget regarded him as his "spiritual father."
In 1956, his "own" colors became more pearly and iridescent. The contour forms became less distinct, the horizon more prominent, and the sky more essential. Around 1956, Moget adopted the habit of painting along the quay of Port la Nouvelle from a small delivery van. The central themes of his work became the canal, the dam, the sea, and space. From the beach or the quay, he worked on his paintings from his camper. Moget didn't need to see the sea directly; 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 were always changing, depending on brightness, colors, and the time of day, and he aimed to capture that for years, as shown below.
From 1956 to 1964, he organized "Les Rencontres autour de l'Art Contemporain" (Meetings around Contemporary Art) in Languedoc-Roussillon. This initiative brought together works by artists like Geer van Velde, Roger Bissière, Nicolas de Staël, Maurice Esteve, Charles Lapicque, André Lanskoy, Serge Poliakoff, Yves Tanguy, Fernand Léger, and the Cobra group, among many others. Later, Moget also contributed to the establishment of the Contemporary Art Center in Sérignan with exhibitions featuring artists like Jacques Villon and Joan Miró and exhibitions for other museums. Moget had a knack for bringing people and art together. His son, Pierre Francois, is now a leading expert on the works of the Van Velde brothers and, of course, on his father's work.
