Composition No. 11

This looks like pure abstraction, a loose grid of short black strokes over pale ochre, pink and grey. Its starting point was a real place. Years earlier Mondrian had painted the river 't Gein near Amsterdam again and again, a row of trees along the bank, the Geinrust farm, the whole scene doubled in the still water. By 1913 he had boiled all of that down until the trees and their reflection survive only as rhythm. He described what he was after plainly, saying he arranged lines and colour on a flat surface to show a general beauty as clearly as he could. The canvas is large for such quiet means, more than a metre across.