Composition with Color Planes and Gray Lines

There is a reason so much early Mondrian hangs here in Otterlo. Around 1916 the art adviser H.P. Bremmer began paying the painter a modest yearly income in return for pictures, and Bremmer was buying for Helene Kröller-Müller, the collector whose holdings became this museum. That steady support arrived just as Mondrian was working through paintings like this one, pale planes of colour laid under a light scaffolding of grey lines. The money mattered, because work this austere sold to almost no one at the time. Thanks to Bremmer's eye, the Kröller-Müller ended up with one of the largest groups of Mondrian's work anywhere.