Composition with Large Red Plane, Yellow, Black, Gray, and Blue (version 1)

Down near the bottom of this canvas sits a modest signature, "PM '21," identifying it as the work of Piet Mondrian, painted in 1921. The Dutch artist helped lead a movement called De Stijl, or "The Style," which pushed art toward its simplest possible ingredients. For Mondrian, that meant nothing but straight lines, perfect right angles, and the primary colors red, yellow, and blue, rounded out with black, white, and gray. Everything you see here follows those rules: flat blocks of color penned in by thick black bands.

A big red rectangle anchors the upper portion, while patches of yellow, blue, and black gather around it like pieces of a carefully solved puzzle. Nothing lines up in a mirror image, and that was the point. Mondrian fussed endlessly over the exact size and position of each shape until the whole thing felt balanced to his eye. He wasn't chasing decoration. In his mind, these tidy arrangements captured a larger sense of order and harmony running through the universe. That belief turned out to have surprising reach, shaping architecture, fashion, and graphic design in ways still visible today.