Composition

By 1929 Mondrian had been working for eight years in a studio at 26 rue du Départ in Paris. He whitewashed the room and pinned cardboard rectangles painted red, yellow, blue, grey and black across its walls, moving them around as he thought. This small, almost square canvas comes out of that room. A red square holds the top left corner, a narrow strip of blue sits against the right edge, and a short yellow bar runs along the bottom, all locked in place by black lines on a field of white and pale grey.

It still hangs in the frame Mondrian made for it, which the Guggenheim counts as part of the work. The painting belonged to Katherine Dreier, an American painter who in 1920 had founded the Société Anonyme with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray to show modern art in the United States. After her death in 1952 it came to the Guggenheim in 1953, one of 28 works from her estate.