Compositie met raster 6: ruit, compositie met kleuren

In 1919 Mondrian tried a small move that he would keep for the rest of his life. He took a square canvas and hung it on one corner, so it reads as a diamond. The grid of lines inside stays strictly upright and level, which means the only diagonals in the whole picture are its four edges. He avoided drawing a diagonal line at all and simply let the frame supply them. Here the mesh is still regular and even, a field of small squares in grey with a few tinted faintly. Turning the square gave that quiet grid a tension it would not have had hanging flat. He went back to Paris that same year and soon began trading this even lattice for the bold black bars people picture when they hear his name.