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Sale 1229, Lot 23
Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)
"Composition in White, Blue, and Yellow": C, 1936
Oil on canvas
Estimate: $6,000,000-9,000,000
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'Composition in White, Blue, and Yellow': C is a superb example of Mondrian's work from the mid-1930s, widely hailed by critics and collectors as the most dynamic period in his career.
While the paintings from the late 1920s and early 1930s are characterized by a spare and reductive purity, Mondrian's compositions from 1932 onward are celebrated instead for their unparalleled freedom and vitality.
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This revolution in his work was inaugurated by the introduction of a single new pictorial strategy: the double line.
In addition to increasing the complexity and heightening the tempo of his compositions, this innovative device enabled him to problematize the distinction between the two essential elements of his art: line and plane.
The result was a series of pictures that exemplify what the artist himself described as a 'dynamic equilibrium'.
As he explained, 'This equilibrium is clearly not that of an old gentleman sitting in an armchair or of two equal sacks of potatoes on the scales. On the contrary, equilibrium through equivalence excludes similarity a symmetry, just as it excludes repose in the sense of immobility.'
The evolution of the present composition may be clearly traced over a period of several years. The basic compositional type, with its prominent central crossing, is one that Mondrian explored repeatedly between 1929 and 1931.
The same format provided the scaffolding for Mondrian's very first experiment with the double line, and for many of his most successful double-line canvases thereafter.
The present example is especially noteworthy for its artful use of colour. The yellow and blue planes provide a strong asymmetrical bias that checks the evenness of the linear rhythm. Whereas the expansive yellow seems to depart upward, the solid blue anchors the composition down, acting as a stabilizing weight to counterbalance the unenclosed white rectangles. Moreover, the blue is approximately the same thickness as the space between the two horizontals of the double line, heightening the ontological ambiguity of line and plane.
'Composition in White, Blue, and Yellow': C also has an exceptionally interesting history.
It is nearly identical in composition to a painting from 1935, now in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. Mondrian undertook the second version after two different collectors expressed interest in the Hirshhorn picture: A. Everett Austin, Jr., the director of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut; and the English painter Winifred Nicholson, wife of Ben Nicholson.
Mondrian also reported in a letter to Nicholson that he had not been completely pleased with the 1935 painting, and believed that the second version would be better.
In the end, Austin opted to acquire another painting entirely, and Nicholson in turn bought the Hirshhorn canvas. The present picture was purchased shortly thereafter by the New York collector, Mrs. George Henry Warren, Jr. - by her own account, in lieu of a fur coat.
Laura Klar, Ph.D. candidate, History of Art, New York University
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