Composition A: Composition with Black, Red, Gray, Yellow, and Blue

Mondrian had gone home to the Netherlands in 1914 to visit his sick father, and the outbreak of the First World War stranded him there for five years. In that forced pause he worked out, with the painter Theo van Doesburg, the strict language they called De Stijl: only straight horizontals and verticals, only primary colors with black, white and grey. Back in Paris by 1919, he put it fully into practice, and this canvas from 1920 is among the first to follow the rule without compromise. The colors here are still muted, greyish reds and blues rather than the pure blocks of his later work. It is the only painting by Mondrian in any Italian museum.