Nowadays, Mondrian is internationally renowned for his abstract paintings with rectangles of primary colours and black lines. But before he took the step towards this new art, landscapes were his main subject. He painted the ruin of the medieval castle in Brederode – which still looks the same today – near the North Holland village Santpoort-Zuid. Mondrian used short, angular brushstrokes, in an early indication of his fascination with geometric composition, long before he made his first abstract painting.