A work by painter Piet Mondrian fetched a record $51 million (€49.42 million) at an auction in New York on Monday. It’s about the canvas Composition IIconsidered a masterpiece of abstract art.
This amount of money has never been paid for a work by the Dutch painter.
In 1983 the same canvas was auctioned for 2.15 million dollars, a record amount for a Mondrian. Composition II now goes to an anonymous Asian collector.
composition II, painted in 1930, it shows Mondrian at the peak of his abstract abilities. He refines this working method during a stay in Paris, where he immerses himself in the lively art world of the 1920s and early 1930s. In his canvases of that period he uses at most one area of primary color per painting, in this case red.
The works of this period are completely different from Mondrian’s earlier experiments with abstraction before and during the First World War, as well as from his later Boogie Woogieworks he produced after moving to America in 1940.
“The work exudes an electricity that reflects the energy of painting in Europe at the time and is as vital as when it was painted almost a hundred years ago,” said Oliver Barker, European director at Sotheby’s auction house, in a Press release.
Mondrian is counted among the absolute great masters of the Netherlands, together with Rembrandt and Van Gogh, who brought about a revolution in painting.
