A ‘universal beauty’: how Mondrian reinvented abstraction

In his work, Piet Mondrian famously employed only the fundamentals of painting — straight lines, primary colours and the neutrals of black, white and grey — in a unique form of geometric abstraction he pioneered known as Neo-Plasticism. These tenets also extended to his apartment and studio at 26 rue du Départ in Paris, where the Dutch artist’s walls were covered in geometric cardboard shapes that he frequently moved around, and the objects were few but painted in primary hues. Those who entered the studio were astonished by the spare, orderly space. Alexander Calder said his visit to Mondrian’s studio inspired him to explore abstraction.

It was at this address that Mondrian began work on Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Grey, Yellow, Black and Blue. Painted in 1922, the work exemplifies his iconic visual language at its best. ‘While prevailing artistic trends in post-war Europe favoured a return to figuration and classical ideals, Mondrian pursued his own unique form of pure abstraction — a groundbreaking and thoroughly modern approach to painting in service of the creation of a universal visual language,’ says Vanessa Fusco, International Director, Head of Impressionist and Modern Art, at Christie’s.

This May the rare painting will be offered at Christie’s in New York as part of Leonard & Louise Riggio: Collected Works. The single-owner evening sale comprises more than 30 works by notable artists from René Magritte and Pablo Picasso to Alberto Giacometti and Andy Warhol. A standout lot of the season, the Mondrian reflects the couple’s deep appreciation for artists who challenged existing ideas and pushed art history forward.

In pursuit of universal beauty

After World War I, Mondrian moved from Amsterdam to Paris, where he had lived for a couple years before the war and had been influenced by the Cubism of Picasso and Braque. This time Mondrian brought along ideas he had developed with the painters Theo van Doesburg, Bart van der Leck and Vilmos Huszar in the Netherlands. Together Mondrian and van Doesburg had founded De Stijl in 1917, an artistic and architectural movement that promoted abstraction based on simplicity and strict geometry. The guiding philosophy of De Stijl was Mondrian’s aesthetic theory of abstract painting, which he first described in the long essay ‘Neo-Plasticism in Pictorial Art’.

‘The task today, then, is to create a direct expression of beauty — clear and as far as possible “universal”,’ Mondrian wrote. ‘It will be a purely plastic beauty, this is, beauty expressed exclusively through lines, planes or volumes and through colour — a beauty without natural form and without representation. It is purely abstract art.’  

In Paris from 1920 to 1922, Mondrian completed more than thirty paintings using this controlled pictorial vocabulary, roughly one-fifth of his total Neo-Plastic output. These works document Mondrian’s experiments refining his ideas — changing the dynamics of the grid, adjusting the thickness of the lines, tweaking the saturation of colour — to realise the full potential of his iconic style.   

‘In a Mondrian, every centimetre has been calculated, changed, reorganized,’ explained art historian Nicholas Fox Weber, during a recent talk at the Guggenheim Museum on the occasion of a new exhibition on the evolution of the Mondrian’s style. Weber is the author of the 2024 biography Mondrian: His Life, His Art, His Quest for the Absolute.

Finding ‘the right red, blue, yellow, grey’

The genius of Mondrian’s compositions is the rhythmic complexity found within their apparent simplicity. Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Grey, Yellow, Black and Blue evinces the dynamism of his restrained visual language.

‘This painting demonstrates the extreme rigour of Mondrian’s process, which you can see in the way the artist has worked and reworked the planes of colour and the thickness of the lines,’ says Fusco. ‘It’s a painting that transports you, that rewards prolonged and careful looking, as you appreciate the fastidious study and contemplation that went into creating the perfect harmony of the composition.’

Here, the eye is immediately drawn to the large, vibrant red square, positioned off-centre towards the top of the composition. In the composition, there’s an ongoing conversation between disparate elements: planes of white, grey, yellow, black and blue fan out towards the edges of the canvas, divided by black lines of varying widths.

‘It is not enough to place side by side a red, a blue, a yellow, and a grey, because that remains merely decorative,’ he once wrote in the magazine De Stijl. ‘It has to be the right red, blue, yellow, grey, etc.: each right in itself and right in relation to the others.’ Mondrian imbues pure abstraction with vitality, forcing the eye across the canvas, following the black lines and coloured squares.

Pushing abstraction forwards

The 1922 painting captures a pivotal moment in Mondrian’s search for a universal visual language. ‘His quest was to know what it was that lasts forever,’ said Weber. ‘He was looking for the things that pertain to everyone. These qualities of light and movement are things that last for everyone for all time.’ This same quest is one of the overarching themes of the Riggio’s collection, in which a rich artistic dialogue spans movements and media.

Mondrian’s idea of pure abstraction would not only define his oeuvre but go on to influence countless artists, designers and creators across generations. In the realm of fashion, Yves Saint Laurent, Hermès and Prada have all released designs inspired by Mondrian's iconic aesthetic.

Composition with Large Red Plane, Bluish Grey, Yellow, Black and Blue, which has been included in major museum exhibitions at the National Gallery in Washington DC and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others, highlights the culmination of the style that would define his legacy as an artist and forever change our concept of abstraction.