Mondrian completed this painting in 1942, soon after he moved to Manhattan from London. Just as the crisscrossing roads of Broadacre City disperse its inhabitants across the landscape, the gridded lines of Mondrian’s composition distribute blocks of primary colors across the canvas. This similarity may be more than mere coincidence. The rectilinear, machine-made forms of Wright’s architecture had influenced the formation of De Stijl, a Dutch design movement advocating abstraction in the arts that counted Mondrian as a founding member.
2024
Provenance Research Project
This work is included in the Provenance Research Project, which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.
1937-42 – ?, Piet Mondrian, New York.
[Estate of Piet Mondrian (Harry Holtzman), New York]
By 1957, Lee A. Ault, New York
1957 – 1967, Sidney Janis, New York, acquired from Lee A. Ault
1967, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired as a gift from Sidney and Harriet Janis
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Piet Mondrian
Dutch, 1872–1944 30 works onlineFor Piet Mondrian, abstract painting was the means of achieving an equilibrium between the “concrete” (the tangible and specific aspects of reality perceived by the senses) and the “universal” (the underlying, essential truths that he believed were constant and unchanging).
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