Self-portrait

By 1918 Mondrian was already deep in the pure grids of red, blue and yellow that made his name, working out the new abstract language of De Stijl with his colleagues in wartime Holland, where he had been stranded when the fighting began. So it is a small surprise to find him, that same year, painting his own face in a fairly traditional way. He looks straight out, formally dressed, and behind him hangs a hint of one of his abstract canvases, as if to place the two Mondrians in the same frame. It is the one self-portrait in which he presents himself plainly as a painter.