Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red and Gray
Artwork by Piet Mondrian • 1921
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About this artwork - painting analysis
Tilted at forty-five degrees on its point, Piet Mondrian's canvas entitled "Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red and Grey" embodies the radical culmination of his quest for pure abstraction. This square work of 84 x 84 centimetres, presented as a lozenge, deploys a network of black orthogonal lines that divide the space into irregular rectangles and squares. On this rigorous grid are articulated zones of primary colours – yellow, blue, red – as well as grey and white surfaces that create a dynamic, perfectly controlled balance. The rotation of the format imparts a particular visual tension to the whole, as if the composition were seeking to escape its frame.
The technique employed reveals the absolute rigour of the Dutch master. Mondrian applies oil paint in uniform flat areas, refusing any trace of spontaneous gesture or expressive impasto. The black lines, drawn with the brush with quasi-architectural precision, structure the space according to the principles of neoplasticism, a movement he theorized within the De Stijl group from 1917 onwards. This search for universal harmony through the reduction of pictorial means – primary colours, straight lines, right angles – translates a spiritual aspiration to represent the very essence of reality, beyond natural appearances.
The lozenge format, experimented with by Mondrian during the 1920s and 1930s, illustrates his constant desire for formal renewal. This oblique orientation accentuates the internal dynamism of the composition and creates a tension between the implicit verticality of the gaze and the diagonal axis of the canvas. Held at the Art Institute of Chicago, this painting bears witness to the international dissemination of Mondrian's work and its considerable influence on American geometric abstraction in the postwar period.
Through its radical rejection of figuration and its quest for plastic absolutes, "Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red and Grey" remains a major reference point in modern art, whose legacy continues to inform design, architecture and contemporary creation today.
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Image license: faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional public domain work of art.
