New York City (version 3)
By Piet Mondrian, 1942
Yellow, red, and blue strips race across this canvas, layering over and under one another like a map of streets glimpsed from a skyscraper window. Piet Mondrian painted this in 1942, not long after leaving war-torn Europe behind and settling in America. By then he was already known for his tidy grids built from black lines and blocks of primary color, yet here he broke his own rule. Out went the black, and in came these woven bands of pure color, giving the picture a bounce and swing it never had before.
New York thrilled Mondrian from the start. He loved its tall buildings, its restless pace, and above all its jazz, and something of that beat seems to run through these crossing lines. Rather than brush every stripe on by hand, he often worked with strips of colored tape that he could shift around until the arrangement felt right, tweaking the composition like a musician adjusting a tune. Some of his late paintings were never truly finished this way, which is part of their charm.
Several versions of this idea exist, each with its own slightly different pattern. Stare long enough and the plain straight lines start to blur into pure sensation, colors humming against one another. That electric buzz is exactly what Mondrian wanted to bottle from the city he came to love as home.