Composition with Red, Blue, Yellow, Black, and Gray
Artist: Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872-1944)
Date: 1922
Dimensions:
Painting: 16 1/2 × 19 1/8 in. (41.9 × 48.6 cm)
Frame: 19 1/2 × 17 1/2 × 2 in. (49.5 × 44.5 × 5.1 cm)
Medium: oil on canvas
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
Object number: 1978.44
Label Text:“Every true artist has been inspired more by the beauty of lines and color and the relationships between them than by the concrete subject of the picture.”—Piet Mondrian
Dominated by a large white square surrounded by small color planes that extend to the edges of the canvas, Composition with Red, Blue, Yellow, Black, and Gray expresses Piet Mondrian’s desire to balance opposing forces by concentrating on the subtle relationship between lines, shapes, and colors.
Here, he dramatically balanced the red rectangle at the upper left with narrow yellow, blue, and black rectangles in the lower right corner. The grid-like, black lines that serve as boundaries to the color planes stop short of the canvas edges, creating spatial ambiguities of projection and recession.
Mondrian believed his nonrepresentational style, which he called Neoplasticism, expressed the unity and order possible in nature when opposing forces are in balance. He hoped his images of absolute harmony, clarity, and order would point the way toward a future universal utopia.
Dominated by a large white square surrounded by small color planes that extend to the edges of the canvas, Composition with Red, Blue, Yellow, Black, and Gray expresses Piet Mondrian’s desire to balance opposing forces by concentrating on the subtle relationship between lines, shapes, and colors.
Here, he dramatically balanced the red rectangle at the upper left with narrow yellow, blue, and black rectangles in the lower right corner. The grid-like, black lines that serve as boundaries to the color planes stop short of the canvas edges, creating spatial ambiguities of projection and recession.
Mondrian believed his nonrepresentational style, which he called Neoplasticism, expressed the unity and order possible in nature when opposing forces are in balance. He hoped his images of absolute harmony, clarity, and order would point the way toward a future universal utopia.
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