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拍品专文
Painted in 1921, Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow emerged during a period of intense creativity and radical evolution in Piet Mondrian’s career, as he set out to define the essential principles of his pioneering style of abstraction known as Neo-Plasticism. Centered on the interaction of geometric planes of pure, unmodulated color set within a grid of black vertical and horizontal lines, this bold new aesthetic was the product of years of development on Mondrian’s part, as he sought to reach a pure, universal form of artistic expression that would transcend time. In 1920 he reached a break-through, establishing the revolutionary artistic vocabulary that would cement his reputation as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. As art historian John Milner has noted, however, “It was in 1921 that Mondrian’s visual vocabulary crystallized into its definitive form,” achieving its iconic resolution in works such as Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow (Mondrian, London, 1992, p. 161).
In a letter to Theo Van Doesburg in October 1921, Mondrian reported that he had “been working much, or rather continuously” in recent months on new compositions that he felt represented this important step forward in his work (quoted in J.M. Joosten, Piet Mondrian: Catalogue Raisonné of the Work of 1911-1944, New York, 1998, vol. II, p. 290). Across this pivotal sequence of paintings—many of which are now held in renowned museum collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag—Mondrian developed the essential elements of his mature pictorial language, with each canvas reflecting the spirit of invention and evolution that occupied his imagination during this exceptional year. Formerly in the collections of Léonce Rosenberg and James Johnson Sweeney, Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow is an exemplary work from this important series, each plane of color and carefully delineated line a testament to the rapid progression and innovation of Mondrian’s style at this vital moment in his career.
When Mondrian had returned to Paris in 1919, he found himself unexpectedly out-of-step with many of his fellow artists in the city’s avant-garde. During the First World War tastes had shifted, as the daring fragmentation and simultaneity of Cubism and Futurism had given way to a more classically-inspired approach to form and figuration, in what became known as la rappel à l’ordre (the return to order). Writing to Van Doesburg from Paris, Mondrian lamented that “once again materialism dominates” (quoted in ibid., p. 120). Nevertheless, Mondrian remained convinced of the potential of his abstract vision, and the sense of purity, balance and order possible through Neo-Plastic painting. “The task… is to create a direct expression of beauty—clear and as far as possible ‘universal’,” Mondrian later wrote of his approach. “It will be a purely plastic beauty, that is, beauty expressed exclusively through lines, planes or volumes and through color—a beauty without natural form and without representation. It is purely abstract art” (“Purely Abstract Art”; reproduced in H. Holtzman and M.S. James, eds., The New Art—The New Life: The Collected Writings of Piet Mondrian, London, 1986, p. 199).
Through the opening years of the 1920s, Mondrian diligently explored the formal potential of his ideas, adjusting the arrangement of his grids, the thickness of their dividing lines, the saturation of color and the placement of various elements, in order to analyze the way subtle changes effected the overall balance and impact of the composition. Scholars have identified two major compositional schemas that occupied Mondrian repeatedly during this pioneering period. In the first, referred to as the “peripheral” type, the greater part of the canvas is occupied by a square or almost square field of white, set near the center of the picture and bounded on three or four sides by lines and narrow elongated planes. The other, in contrast, is organized around two dominant lines, one horizontal and the other vertical, that cross near the middle of the painting, creating a “central” focus within the composition. These intersecting lines partition the picture plane into four roughly equal compartments, each of which is subdivided in a different way.
Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow follows the latter of these two structural programs, and is one of the earliest examples of Mondrian’s works in which a single large square dominates the rhythmic balance of the painting. Here, the primary crossing of the black lines is set slightly off-center, generating an a-symmetrical configuration that gives the right hand side of the composition a greater prominence. The upper right segment is given over entirely to a large red square, which exudes a powerful visual energy, while the lower portions of the grid are subdivided into a series of smaller rectangles, that vary between vertical and horizontal orientation. Across the canvas, Mondrian alternates between vibrant, rich hues and softer, more delicate neutral tones—a strong, ultramarine blue rectangle hugs the left edge of the canvas, while beside it a soft gray hue is deployed above a flat, matte black segment that subtly contrasts against the gloss of the dividing lines. A bright yellow rectangle anchors this section of the composition, its vibrancy offering an intriguing counterpoint to the subtle nuances of its neighbors, while also counterbalancing the power of the red square above.
Throughout the painting, the black lines of the grid do not run to the edge of the canvas, stopping short of the boundary of the picture plane, and instead leaving a small segment of the bordering rectangles visible. This allows the colors of each panel to interact directly with their neighboring planes, softening the strict geometry of the composition and introducing an unexpected organic quality that highlights the presence of the artist behind the work. Perhaps most intriguingly, along the lower edge of the canvas, a thin strip of gray pigment appears to float independently within the configuration, unbound by any black lines. This allows it to interact directly with the yellow pigment in the adjoining space to its right, revealing the dynamic layering of paint within the canvas and introducing a vivid sense of three-dimensionality.
Mondrian’s bold new approach to abstraction soon drew the attention of the Parisian avant-garde, most notably the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg, who was a passionate and dedicated champion of Cubism. In late 1920, Rosenberg agreed to publish a booklet of Mondrian’s writing, which would outline the artist’s most up-to-date thoughts and the key principles of the Neo-Plastic aesthetic. For Mondrian, this represented an important step forward for De Stijl, marking “the start of our collective campaign [in Paris]” and bringing their ideas to a French-speaking audience for the first time (letter to T. Van Doesburg, quoted in G. Casini, Léonce Rosenberg’s Cubism: The Galerie L’Effort Moderne in Interwar Paris, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2023, p. 49). Rosenberg also featured a group of Mondrian’s most recent paintings in an important group-show in the spring of 1921, “Les maîtres du cubisme,” alongside works by Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Auguste Herbin, Josef Csáky, Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier.
Published in February 1921, around the same time the artist was working on the present composition, Le Néo-Plasticisme. Principe Général de l’Equivalence Plastique reveals the key ideas that were dominating Mondrian’s vision at this time. “The colored planes, as much by position and dimension as by the greater value given to color, plastically express only relationships and not forms,” he wrote (quoted in H. Holtzman and M.S. James, op. cit., 1986, p. 137). “Because the New Plastic wants to abolish the natural,” he continued, “it is logical that it places the three colors in painting, and the corresponding tones in music, in quite different relationships of dimension, strength, color or tonality while still preserving aesthetic equilibrium. Can it be objected that the New Plastic is not harmonious (in the old sense of the word), that it does not express unity—precisely when in reality it expresses unity to greater perfection?” (ibid., p. 145).
Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow was among a group of nine works that Mondrian placed on consignment with Rosenberg later that year, which the dealer included in the exhibition “Quelques aspects nouveaux de la tradition” at the Galerie de L’Effort Moderne in October 1921. Mondrian was granted an entire wall within the display, which he felt offered a cohesive presentation of his new aesthetic, allowing visitors to fully absorb the subtle shifts and nuances from one composition to the next. However, by the time the exhibition closed, Rosenberg had been unable to sell any of Mondrian’s paintings, and the artist was severely disappointed. Nevertheless, Rosenberg remained encouraging, stating that he was convinced Mondrian’s moment would come, assuring him that he was his “greatest artist” (quoted in J.M. Joosten, op. cit., 1998, p. 122). Mondrian gifted the present painting to Rosenberg shortly thereafter, no doubt a sign of his deep appreciation for the dealer’s enduring support and faith in his vision.
The painting remained with Rosenberg until circa 1934, at which point it was acquired by the writer, critic, art historian and curator, James Johnson Sweeney. Born in Brooklyn at the turn of the twentieth century, Sweeney travelled from New York to Paris as a young man in his twenties, before undertaking a degree in literature at Cambridge University. During the 1930s, he was an editor at the experimental literary journal Transition, where he was involved in editing and publishing pieces by James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Dylan Thomas, Marcel Duchamp, and many other members of the European avant-garde. Sweeney was a tireless advocate for modernism, writing eloquently on the most adventurous and thought-provoking aspects of contemporary art, and was a particular champion of abstract or “nonobjective” painting. In 1934, his monograph Plastic Redirections in 20th Century Painting was published, with Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow included among the illustrations.
In 1935, Sweeney was hired as a curator at The Museum of Modern Art in New York by Alfred H. Barr, and was soon invited to take on the position of Director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture. During his time at MoMA, Sweeney played a central role in the organization of a number of forward-looking shows in the institution’s early history. As a result of this close connection, Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow was included in several important exhibitions at the museum, including “Cubism and Abstract Art,” which took place from 2 March to 19 April 1936, as well as the memorial retrospective dedicated to Mondrian that opened in the spring of 1945. Writing on the occasion of this show, Sweeney proclaimed his enduring admiration for the artist’s work: “Mondrian’s fundamental aim in art was to transcend the particular to express the universal. He was the great uncompromising classicist of the early 20th century” (“Piet Mondrian” in The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, Spring 1945, vol. XII, no. 4, p. 9). The painting remained a central piece within Sweeney’s personal art collection for over half a century, before being acquired by Si Newhouse in 2000.
In a letter to Theo Van Doesburg in October 1921, Mondrian reported that he had “been working much, or rather continuously” in recent months on new compositions that he felt represented this important step forward in his work (quoted in J.M. Joosten, Piet Mondrian: Catalogue Raisonné of the Work of 1911-1944, New York, 1998, vol. II, p. 290). Across this pivotal sequence of paintings—many of which are now held in renowned museum collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Kunstmuseum Basel and the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag—Mondrian developed the essential elements of his mature pictorial language, with each canvas reflecting the spirit of invention and evolution that occupied his imagination during this exceptional year. Formerly in the collections of Léonce Rosenberg and James Johnson Sweeney, Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow is an exemplary work from this important series, each plane of color and carefully delineated line a testament to the rapid progression and innovation of Mondrian’s style at this vital moment in his career.
When Mondrian had returned to Paris in 1919, he found himself unexpectedly out-of-step with many of his fellow artists in the city’s avant-garde. During the First World War tastes had shifted, as the daring fragmentation and simultaneity of Cubism and Futurism had given way to a more classically-inspired approach to form and figuration, in what became known as la rappel à l’ordre (the return to order). Writing to Van Doesburg from Paris, Mondrian lamented that “once again materialism dominates” (quoted in ibid., p. 120). Nevertheless, Mondrian remained convinced of the potential of his abstract vision, and the sense of purity, balance and order possible through Neo-Plastic painting. “The task… is to create a direct expression of beauty—clear and as far as possible ‘universal’,” Mondrian later wrote of his approach. “It will be a purely plastic beauty, that is, beauty expressed exclusively through lines, planes or volumes and through color—a beauty without natural form and without representation. It is purely abstract art” (“Purely Abstract Art”; reproduced in H. Holtzman and M.S. James, eds., The New Art—The New Life: The Collected Writings of Piet Mondrian, London, 1986, p. 199).
Through the opening years of the 1920s, Mondrian diligently explored the formal potential of his ideas, adjusting the arrangement of his grids, the thickness of their dividing lines, the saturation of color and the placement of various elements, in order to analyze the way subtle changes effected the overall balance and impact of the composition. Scholars have identified two major compositional schemas that occupied Mondrian repeatedly during this pioneering period. In the first, referred to as the “peripheral” type, the greater part of the canvas is occupied by a square or almost square field of white, set near the center of the picture and bounded on three or four sides by lines and narrow elongated planes. The other, in contrast, is organized around two dominant lines, one horizontal and the other vertical, that cross near the middle of the painting, creating a “central” focus within the composition. These intersecting lines partition the picture plane into four roughly equal compartments, each of which is subdivided in a different way.
Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow follows the latter of these two structural programs, and is one of the earliest examples of Mondrian’s works in which a single large square dominates the rhythmic balance of the painting. Here, the primary crossing of the black lines is set slightly off-center, generating an a-symmetrical configuration that gives the right hand side of the composition a greater prominence. The upper right segment is given over entirely to a large red square, which exudes a powerful visual energy, while the lower portions of the grid are subdivided into a series of smaller rectangles, that vary between vertical and horizontal orientation. Across the canvas, Mondrian alternates between vibrant, rich hues and softer, more delicate neutral tones—a strong, ultramarine blue rectangle hugs the left edge of the canvas, while beside it a soft gray hue is deployed above a flat, matte black segment that subtly contrasts against the gloss of the dividing lines. A bright yellow rectangle anchors this section of the composition, its vibrancy offering an intriguing counterpoint to the subtle nuances of its neighbors, while also counterbalancing the power of the red square above.
Throughout the painting, the black lines of the grid do not run to the edge of the canvas, stopping short of the boundary of the picture plane, and instead leaving a small segment of the bordering rectangles visible. This allows the colors of each panel to interact directly with their neighboring planes, softening the strict geometry of the composition and introducing an unexpected organic quality that highlights the presence of the artist behind the work. Perhaps most intriguingly, along the lower edge of the canvas, a thin strip of gray pigment appears to float independently within the configuration, unbound by any black lines. This allows it to interact directly with the yellow pigment in the adjoining space to its right, revealing the dynamic layering of paint within the canvas and introducing a vivid sense of three-dimensionality.
Mondrian’s bold new approach to abstraction soon drew the attention of the Parisian avant-garde, most notably the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg, who was a passionate and dedicated champion of Cubism. In late 1920, Rosenberg agreed to publish a booklet of Mondrian’s writing, which would outline the artist’s most up-to-date thoughts and the key principles of the Neo-Plastic aesthetic. For Mondrian, this represented an important step forward for De Stijl, marking “the start of our collective campaign [in Paris]” and bringing their ideas to a French-speaking audience for the first time (letter to T. Van Doesburg, quoted in G. Casini, Léonce Rosenberg’s Cubism: The Galerie L’Effort Moderne in Interwar Paris, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2023, p. 49). Rosenberg also featured a group of Mondrian’s most recent paintings in an important group-show in the spring of 1921, “Les maîtres du cubisme,” alongside works by Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Auguste Herbin, Josef Csáky, Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier.
Published in February 1921, around the same time the artist was working on the present composition, Le Néo-Plasticisme. Principe Général de l’Equivalence Plastique reveals the key ideas that were dominating Mondrian’s vision at this time. “The colored planes, as much by position and dimension as by the greater value given to color, plastically express only relationships and not forms,” he wrote (quoted in H. Holtzman and M.S. James, op. cit., 1986, p. 137). “Because the New Plastic wants to abolish the natural,” he continued, “it is logical that it places the three colors in painting, and the corresponding tones in music, in quite different relationships of dimension, strength, color or tonality while still preserving aesthetic equilibrium. Can it be objected that the New Plastic is not harmonious (in the old sense of the word), that it does not express unity—precisely when in reality it expresses unity to greater perfection?” (ibid., p. 145).
Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow was among a group of nine works that Mondrian placed on consignment with Rosenberg later that year, which the dealer included in the exhibition “Quelques aspects nouveaux de la tradition” at the Galerie de L’Effort Moderne in October 1921. Mondrian was granted an entire wall within the display, which he felt offered a cohesive presentation of his new aesthetic, allowing visitors to fully absorb the subtle shifts and nuances from one composition to the next. However, by the time the exhibition closed, Rosenberg had been unable to sell any of Mondrian’s paintings, and the artist was severely disappointed. Nevertheless, Rosenberg remained encouraging, stating that he was convinced Mondrian’s moment would come, assuring him that he was his “greatest artist” (quoted in J.M. Joosten, op. cit., 1998, p. 122). Mondrian gifted the present painting to Rosenberg shortly thereafter, no doubt a sign of his deep appreciation for the dealer’s enduring support and faith in his vision.
The painting remained with Rosenberg until circa 1934, at which point it was acquired by the writer, critic, art historian and curator, James Johnson Sweeney. Born in Brooklyn at the turn of the twentieth century, Sweeney travelled from New York to Paris as a young man in his twenties, before undertaking a degree in literature at Cambridge University. During the 1930s, he was an editor at the experimental literary journal Transition, where he was involved in editing and publishing pieces by James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Dylan Thomas, Marcel Duchamp, and many other members of the European avant-garde. Sweeney was a tireless advocate for modernism, writing eloquently on the most adventurous and thought-provoking aspects of contemporary art, and was a particular champion of abstract or “nonobjective” painting. In 1934, his monograph Plastic Redirections in 20th Century Painting was published, with Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow included among the illustrations.
In 1935, Sweeney was hired as a curator at The Museum of Modern Art in New York by Alfred H. Barr, and was soon invited to take on the position of Director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture. During his time at MoMA, Sweeney played a central role in the organization of a number of forward-looking shows in the institution’s early history. As a result of this close connection, Composition with Large Red Plane, Blue, Gray, Black and Yellow was included in several important exhibitions at the museum, including “Cubism and Abstract Art,” which took place from 2 March to 19 April 1936, as well as the memorial retrospective dedicated to Mondrian that opened in the spring of 1945. Writing on the occasion of this show, Sweeney proclaimed his enduring admiration for the artist’s work: “Mondrian’s fundamental aim in art was to transcend the particular to express the universal. He was the great uncompromising classicist of the early 20th century” (“Piet Mondrian” in The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, Spring 1945, vol. XII, no. 4, p. 9). The painting remained a central piece within Sweeney’s personal art collection for over half a century, before being acquired by Si Newhouse in 2000.
