Piet Mondrian was the leading artist of the 'De Stijl' (the style) movement, a group of Dutch artists who produced strictly geometric, abstract art. Mondrian's early work painted from nature became increasingly abstract. For example a series of studies of trees and their branches made from 1909 to 1913 evolved into a criss-cross of lines. However it was when he became a member of the Theosophist group that he began to paint the grid paintings with which he is associated. Theosophists saw existence in terms of harmony between male and female, positive and negative, horizontal and vertical. Mondrian's paintings embody this sense of balance.
Note: Many pieces by Piet Mondrian have been omitted from this series as they are deemed to be held in copyright.
For a broader biography see part 1 also. For earlier works by Mondrian, see parts 1 - 8 also.
This is part 9 of 9-part series on the works of Piet Mondrian:
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| 1934-35 Composition ( No.IV ) White - Blue oil on canvas 99 x 70.3 cm Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT |
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| 1934-36 Composition No. I / Composition C. / Composition White and Blue oil on canvas 121.3 x 59 cm |
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| 1935 Composition ( No. 1 ) Grey-Red oil on canvas 57.5 x 55.6 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1935 Composition A, with Double Line and Yellow oil on canvas 59 x 56 cm Private Collection |
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| 1935 Composition B ( No.II ) with Red oil on canvas 80.3 x 63.3 cm Tate, London |
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| 1935 Composition C ( No. III ) with Red, Yellow, and Blue oil on canvas 56.2 x 55.1 cm Private Collection |
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| 1935 Composition with double line and blue ( unfinished ) oil on canvas 60 x 50 cm Museum of Modern Art Foundation, Vienna |
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| 1935 Composition with Double Line and Blue oil on canvas 71.1 x 68.9 cm Beyerler Collection, Basel, Switzerland |
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| 1935-42 Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue oil on canvas 101 x 51 cm |
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| 1935-42c Rhythm of Black Lines oil on canvas 72.2 x 69.5 cm Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany |
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| 1936 Composition ( B ) in Blue, Yellow and White oil on canvas 43.5 x 33.5 cm Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland |
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| 1936 Composition in White, Black, and Red oil on canvas 102.2 x 104.1 cm Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| 1936 Composition in White, Blue and Yellow: C oil on canvas 70.5 x 68.5 cm Private Collection |
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| 1936 Composition in White, Red and Blue oil on canvas 98.5 x 80.3 cm Staatsgaleire, Stuttgart, Germany |
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| 1936 Composition in White, Red, and Yellow oil on canvas 80 x 62.2 cm Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA |
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| 1936 Composition with White and Red oil on canvas 50.5 x 51.4 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1936 Composition with Yellow oil on canvas 73 x 66.2 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1936 Vertical Composition with Blue and White oil on canvas 121.3 x 59 cm Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany |
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| 1936-42 Composition No. 12 with Blue oil on canvas 62 x 60.3 cm National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa |
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| 1937 Composition in Red, Blue and White: II oil on canvas 75 x 60.5 cm Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris |
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| 1937 Composition in Yellow, Blue, and White, I oil on canvas 57.1 x 55.2 cm Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| 1937 Opposition of Lines, Reds and Yellow oil on canvas 43.5 x 33.7 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1937-42 Composition in Red, Blue, and Yellow oil on canvas 60.3 x 55.4 cm Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| 1937-42 Composition No. 7, with Red and Blue oil on canvas 80.5 x 62.2 cm Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Museum of Art, Utica, NY |
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| 1937-42 Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow oil on canvas 72.2 x 69.5 cm Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany |
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| 1937-42 Composition with Yellow, Blue and Red oil on canvas 72.7 x 69.2 cm Tate, London |
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| 1937-43 Picture II. With Yellow, Red, and Blue oil on canvas 60 x 55 cm Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden |
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| 1938 Composition ( unfinished ) charcoal on canvas 115 x 115 cm Collection Emily Fisher Landau, New York |
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| 1938-39 Composition ( unfinished ) charcoal on canvas 70 x 72 cm Private Collection |
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| 1938 Composition No. 2 / Composition of Red, Blue, Yellow and White oil on canvas 44.6 x 38.2 cm The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles |
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| 1938 Lozenge Composition with Eight Lines and Red / Picture No. III oil on canvas 100 x 100 cm Beyeler Collection, Basel, Switzerland |
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| 1938-39 Composition No. 1 with Grey and Red 1938 / Composition with Red 1939 oil on canvas laid down on panel 109.1 x 106 cm The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice © 2007 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust |
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| 1938-39 Composition with Red oil on canvas laid down on panel 105.2 x 102.3 cm Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice |
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| 1938-42 Composition No. 9 with Yellow and Red oil on canvas 79.7 x 74 cm Phillips Collection, Washington, DC |
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| 1938-42 Composition No. 10 with Blue, Yellow, and Red oil on canvas 79.5 x 73 cm Private Collection |
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| 1938-42 Composition of Red and White: Nom 1 Composition 4 with Red and Blue oil on canvas 100.3 x 99.1 cm Saint Louis Art Museum, MO |
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| 1938-43 Place de la Concorde oil on canvas 93.9 x 94.4 cm © Dallas Museum of Art, Texas |
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| 1939-42 Composition No. 8 with Red, Blue, and Yellow oil on canvas 75.2 x 68.1 cm Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas |
1939-43 Trafalgar Square
In September 1938 Mondrian moved from Paris to London to escape the threat of a German invasion. There he made Trafalgar Square, the first in a series of paintings titled after locations in cities that gave him refuge during World War II.
The small, subtly textured planes of primary colours that seem to vibrate within their black perimeters are smaller and their arrangement more syncopated than in many of the artists earlier canvases: colour segments expand across two rectangular fields in the larger black grid, and thickened blocks of black function as both line and plane
( at lower right, for example ).
The date "39–43" inscribed on the original canvas stretcher suggests that Mondrian revisited this painting after his flight to New York in 1940 to escape the escalating war.
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| 1939-43 Trafalgar Square oil on canvas 145.2 x 120 cm Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| 1940-41 Study for a Composition collage of cut and pasted papers, prepared with gouache and charcoal, on pieced cream wove newsprint in three parts with charcoal on verso 33 x 27 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1940-42 Composition No.11 - London, with Blue, Red and Yellow oil on canvas 82.5 x 71.1 cm Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY |
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| 1941 Composition with Red and Blue oil on canvas 43.5 x 33 cm Private Collection |
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| 1941 New York City 1 ( unfinished ) oil and painted strips on canvas 119 x 115 cm Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany |
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| 1941 New York City 2 ( unfinished ) charcoal and painted paper strips on canvas 115.7 x 99 cm Private Collection |
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| 1941 New York City, 3 ( unfinished ) oil, pencil, chalk and coloured tape on canvas 117 x 110 cm Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| 1941-42 New York / Boogie Woogie oil on canvas 95.2 x 92 cm |
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| 1942 New York City oil on canvas 119.3 x 114.2 cm Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris |
1942-43 Broadway Boogie Woogie
Mondrian, who had escaped to New York from Europe after the outbreak of World War II, delighted in the city's architecture. He was also fascinated by American jazz, particularly boogie-woogie, finding its syncopated beat, irreverent approach to melody, and improvisational aesthetic akin to what he called, in his own work, the "destruction of natural appearance; and construction through continuous opposition of pure means—dynamic rhythm."
In this painting, his penultimate, Mondrian replaced the black grid that had long governed his canvases with predominantly yellow lines that intersect at points marked by squares of blue and red. These atomized bands of stuttering chromatic pulses, interrupted by light grey, create paths across the canvas suggesting the city's grid, the movement of traffic, and blinking electric lights, as well as the rhythms of jazz.
Notes from Museum of Modern Art, New York
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| 1942-43 Broadway Boogie Woogie oil on canvas 127 x 127 cm Museum of Modern Art, New York |
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| 1943-44 Victory Boogie Woogie oil on paper laid down on canvas 126 x 126 cm Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands |