ハーグ美術館

Piet Mondrian died in New York in 1944 with one painting unfinished on the easel: 'Victory Boogie Woogie', a diamond-shaped canvas jumping with little blocks of red, yellow and blue, his attempt to catch the rhythm of Manhattan jazz. It hangs in The Hague, in the museum that owns more of his work than anywhere else, around 300 pieces tracing his path from ordinary Dutch landscapes to the grid of straight lines and primary colors that made his name.

The building suits him. It was the last design of Hendrik Berlage, the architect often called the father of modern Dutch architecture, who died in 1934 before it was finished. It opened in 1935, a calm composition of yellow brick and long low galleries, among the first museums laid out to move visitors gently from room to room.

Around the Mondrians the collection keeps to the same early-20th-century world, with De Stijl furniture, Art Deco objects and a large holding of modern fashion, so the flat geometry on the walls has its chairs and its dresses close by.