In 1916, after a long search for an entirely new visual vocabulary to represent the physical world, Piet Mondrian arrived at a fully abstract style. He reduced bridges, churches, rivers, trees, and more to a series of horizontal and vertical black lines enclosing fields of unmixed red, blue, and yellow as well as white, black, and gray. This artistic idiom, eventually called Neoplasticism, removed naturalism from painting to reveal the essence of visual forms and provide viewers with a transcendental experience.
While Mondrian’s abstractions may seem simple, he worked hard to achieve the dynamic yet harmonious balance between line and color. He labored over the location, spacing, and thickness of every line, making numerous charcoal sketches both on paper and directly on the canvas. Although not immediately related to any finished painting, Study for a Composition shows the artist’s obsession with the density and placement of line and the number, size, and location of color fields. Here, he collaged red and blue papers to the sheet to examine their weight and position in relation to other elements. This work is the only known surviving study by Mondrian with colored collage elements.
Date
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Collage of cut and pasted papers, prepared with gouache and charcoal, on pieced cream wove newsprint in three parts with charcoal on verso
Dimensions
Max: 33 × 27 cm (13 × 10 11/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
Reference Number
2013.984
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Michel Seuphor, Piet Mondrian: Life and Work (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1956), pp. 394 and 431, no. 612, fig. 431.
Virginia Pitts Rembert, Mondrian, America and American Painting, Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, New York (1970), pp. 306, no. 18, p. 492, fig. 232
Maria Grazia Ottolenghi, L’opera completa di Mondrian (Milan: Rizzoli Editore, 1974), p. 116, no. 471 (ill.).
Virginia Pitts Rembert, Mondrian, America and American Painting (New York, 1979), pp. 306 and 492, fig. 232.
Robert Welsh, “Mondrian as Draftsman,” in Mondrian Zeichnungen (Stuttgart: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1980), pp. 55-56, 57, and 60.
Robert Welsh, “Mondrian dessinateur,” in Atelier de Mondrian: recherches et dessins (Paris: Macula, 1982), p. 24, fig. 17.
Jacques Meuris, Piet Mondrian (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Françaises, 1991), p. 179, fig. 237.
Joop Joosten, Piet Mondrian: Catalogue Raisonné of the Work of 1911-1944 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998), p. 431, no. B362 (ill.).
Harry Cooper and Ron Spronk, Mondrian: The Transatlantic Paintings (New Haven: Yale Univeristy Press, 2001), p. 18 and 19, fig. 5.
Suzanne Folds McCullagh (ed.), Drawings in Dialogue: Old Master Through Modern, The Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection, exh. cat. (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2006), pp. 152-153, cat. 106 (ill.).
New York, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Mondrian—De Stijl and Their Impact, Apr. 1965, cat. 26, as Collage Sketch, 1939-44, ill..
Kassel, Alte Galerie, Documenta III: International Ausstellung, June 27–Oct. 5, 1964, cat. Piet Mondrian 2, as Collage Sketch, 1939-44, ill..
Waltham, Mass., Dreitzer Gallery, Brandeis University, 50 Drawings by 50 Modern Masters, Feb. 22–Apr.5,1970, as Collage Sketch, 1939-44.
Wellesley. Mass., Wellesley College Art Museum, Two Women Collect, Apr. 2–25, 1976.
Wellesley. Mass., Wellesley College Art Museum, One Century: Wellesley Families Collect, Apr. 15–May 30, 1978, cat. 100, as Collage Sketch, 1939-1944, ill..
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Jan. 26–Apr. 27, 1980.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Piet Mondrian: 1972-1944, Oct. 1995 –Jan. 1996, cat. 180, p. 306, ill., cat. by Yves-Alain Bois, et. al.; traveled to the National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C., June 11–Sept. 4, 1995.
AIC, Drawn to Form: Modern Drawings from the Dorothy Braude Edinburg Collection, June 11–Sept. 7, 1999.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Drawings in Dialogue: Old Master Through Modern, The Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection, June 3–July 30, 2006, pp. 152-153, cat. 106 (ill.).
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Modern and Contemporary Works on Paper,” March 24-September 13, 2009, no cat.
Bequeathed by the artist to his friend, Harry Holtzman (1912-1987), New York; Harry Holtzman, to 1964 [according to Joosten 1998]. Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York, by April 1964 [New York 1964 exh. cat.]; sold by Marlborough-Gerson Gallery to Dorothy Braude Edinburg, Brookline, Mass., May 29, 1969; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2013.
Joosten B362
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