Composition in Colors

Blocks of red, blue, orange, and black drift across a creamy, textured background in this 1917 painting by Piet Mondrian. The shapes look almost weightless, like scraps of colored paper floating on a breeze. This is an early chapter in Mondrian's journey toward the tight grids and primary colors he would later be known for. At this stage there are no heavy black lines locking everything in place, so the whole composition feels open and full of air.

Mondrian belonged to a Dutch group called De Stijl, which simply means "The Style." Its artists wanted to reduce painting to its most basic ingredients: pure color and clean geometric form. Mondrian was after a kind of quiet balance, a harmony he felt went deeper than the ordinary world around him. In "Composition in Colors" you get to see him working it out in real time, weighing how each square sits against the others and against the space in between.

The real charm of this piece is that it sits right at a turning point. Within a few years, Mondrian would pin his shapes into the strict black grids and bold reds, blues, and yellows that now appear on everything from tote bags to sneakers. Here, before that order took hold, the painting still has room to breathe, hovering between where he had been and where he was about to go.