Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow

Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow. Piet Mondrian. 1930 C.E. Oil on canvas

• The canvas is small and uses only the simplest of colors: red, blue, yellow, white and black.
• The composition is similarly reduced to the simplest of rectilinear forms, squares and rectangles defined by vertical and horizontal lines. 
• Mondrian called his style Neo-Plasticism; he uses it to refer to the plastic arts—media such as sculpture, that molds three-dimensional form, or, in Mondrian’s case, painting on canvas.
• For centuries, European painters had attempted to render three-dimensional forms in believable spaces—creating convincing illusions of reality.
• In contrast, Mondrian and other modernists wanted to move painting beyond naturalistic depiction to focus instead on the material properties of paint and its unique ability to express ideas abstractly using formal elements such as line and color.
• Mondrian believed his abstraction could serve as a universal pictorial language representing the dynamic, evolutionary forces that govern nature and human experience. In fact, he believed that abstraction provides a truer picture of reality than illusionistic depictions of objects in the visible world.
• His emphasis on line, color, and geometric shape sought to highlight formal characteristics. 
• Mondrian was inspired by Cubism, a movement led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque that explored the use of multiple perspectives. Mondrian began experimenting with abstracted forms around the time he moved to Paris in 1912.
• He wanted to push beyond Cubism’s strategy of fragmenting forms and move toward pure abstraction; he combined his development of an abstract style with his interest in philosophy, spirituality, and his belief that the evolution of abstraction was a sign of humanity’s progress.
• Successive moments of tension and reconciliation between oppositional forces; composing with opposites such as black and white pigments or vertical and horizontal lines suggest an evolutionary development. 
• Promotes his ideas on spiritual evolution and the unification of the real and the ideal, the physical and immaterial. 
• Lines, shapes, and colors symbolized the unity of spiritual and natural forces.
• Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow demonstrates his commitment to relational opposites, asymmetry, and pure planes of color. 
• Mondrian composed this painting as a harmony of contrasts that signify both balance and the tension of dynamic forces. 
• Saw black as a pigment in its own right. 
• He achieves a harmonious tension by his asymmetrical placement of primary colors that balance the blocks of white paint. 
• Mondrian used varying shades of blacks and whites, some of which are subtly lighter or darker. Seen up close, this variety of values and textures create a surprising harmony of contrasts. 
• Even the visible traces of the artist’s brushwork counter what might otherwise be a rigid geometric composition and balance the artist’s desire for a universal truth with the intimately personal experience of the artist.