Composition No. 10

In September 1938, as Europe edged towards war, Mondrian left Paris for London, and this canvas was begun there in 1939. In September 1940, during the Blitz, he moved again and crossed the Atlantic to New York, taking his paintings with him. In Manhattan he went back into 17 of these European canvases. He shifted lines and added small blocks and bars of colour, to make them, as he put it, more boogie-woogie. To record that double history he inscribed them with two dates, and this one reads 39 and 42. The catalogue of Mondrian's work lists it in two states, the picture begun in London and the reworked New York version you are looking at.