Two new Mondrians

In Yvonne Louis's fascinating book A Brush with Mondrian, the author mentions that when Simon Maris's daughter, Mies, died in 1997 (at the age of 87) the artist Paul Gorter found two Mondrians in the Maris family house which are now at the Drents Museum, though not on display for security reasons.

The images are from the museum's catalogue, a scan of which they kindly provided.

The first is Corner of Farmyard (Hoekje van Boerenerf), c.1897/99, black chalk, 31x41.5 cm.

The second is Row of trees along the Gein (Rij bomen langs het Gein), c.1906/07, chalk and watercolour, 59x84 cm.


I cannot find either image in the Catalogue Raisonne, although there are several paintings similar in subject, though not in size, to the watercolour.
[Correction, 23rd Feb, the first is A74 Farmyard in the Achterhoek, 1897-99, shown in the Catalogue as 'Private collection, Weesp'.]

And, of course, Yvonne Louis might have a new Mondrian too.

Mondrian on film

I have been on the lookout for film of PM for years. The 2010 Paris exhibition included a film of Mondrian, Calder and a cat, but I have not found internet links to that yet.

Today, though I found 16 seconds of Mondrian with B323, Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-1943 on the NOS website.


Back to Calder and cats, this blog suggests that the film was shown in New York in 2011.
And this lists the piece as "Elizabeth Fuller Chapman, aka Bobsy Goodspeed – historic footage with Calder, Duchamp, Matisse, Mondrian..."
 

Mondrian portrait

Mondrian's A144 is Seated Woman with Arms Crossed, painted in 1898-1900. The subject is thought to be the Dutch writer Til Brugman or Noortje, the wife of Mondrian's artist friend Simon Maris. 


I love the pose and have sought to encourage others to portray themselves in this way. But no response. There are a few similar Mondrian pieces which I'll add in due course, but apart from that, I'll pursue it through one of me and bits and pieces found elsewhere.


Here's a photograph, taken today, which will provide the basis for a painting. (There's a lucky, unintentional, reflection of one of the Mondrian windows in my specs.)


Then we have Aaron Shikler's 1970 portrait of J.F. Kennedy.

And a 1st-2nd century Roman mask from the British Museum.


Any other contributions will be welcomed.


Here's the original web page.

Iconic homage

B217

Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow, 1930 is, perhaps the best known Mondrian abstract: designated B217 in the Catalogue, it is almost identical to B219 and to uncatalogued gouache. The three are owned by the Kunsthaus, Zürich, the Fukuoka City Bank and the Triton Foundation respectively.

Nick Blackburn

Given its iconic status, it is commonly the subject of homages and I'll show some here.


The first is mine from around 2002.




The second is an intriguing piece, Kompozicija II, from a Serbian web site which keeps disappearing, then popping up elsewhere. Here's the link at the time of writing.

Alexie Sayle

Alexie Sayle used the piece in his BBC Series. The sketch explores the assertion that everyone's first job is (and I quote) "shite". He covers Malcolm X, Joyce, Ghandi and PM: "The minimalist painter Piet Mondrian was a highly unsuccessful court artist for German television. This picture is entitled Scuffle breaks out between prosecuting counsel and defendant." A better image would be nice.


An advertisement for the Investors' Chronicle in The Spectator. Tinkered with and inverted, but still B217.

Katie Jackson

From a long and frequently brilliant series of remakes on booooooom, the suitcase remake is by Katie Jackson.


And finally, from the book Tidying Up Art by Ursus Wehrli. This is out of print and is set at silly prices on second-hand sites (e.g. £160 even from Oxfam). I don't believe anyone has ever paid more than £10 for it, but once one seller generates a random number, the others seem to follow suit. There is a German edition, Kunst aufräumen, which is sensibly-priced and might have the same contents, so I'll buy one of those and see.

Ursus Wehrli

I can confirm that the German edition contains the image and that it references the Kunsthaus Zürich work, B217. There are many other fine pieces covered, well worth buying. 

Marlow Moss

Time to remind anyone with an interest in Mondrian of the merits of Marlow Moss (1889-1958), his friend and reciprocal influence.

The recent Rome exhibition L'armonia perfetta included three of Moss's paintings, including White, black, red and grey, shown right.

Mondrian was a significant influence on Moss and many believe that she influenced him by introducing the double line.

Moss lived with Netty Nijhoff at Chateau d'Evreux, Gauciel in Normandy from 1937, but they fled to Holland and then to England in 1940. The Chateau was taken over by the French air force and in 1944 was destroyed in a bombing raid, along with most of Moss's life work and two Mondrians, lent to Moss by Wim and Tonia Stieltjes.

The literature available on Moss includes a book on the reconstruction of her works by Florette Djikstra, and a PhD thesis by Lucy Howarth, available from the British Library.

Mondrian flowers

I am assembling images of all the Mondrian Flower paintings I can find. Although dismissed by many writers as only being created because the abstracts weren't selling, and even if Mondrian resented having to paint them, I have enjoyed the research and think there are some real gems. They also played a clear role in the path towards abstraction.


The impetus behind this was finding a homage by Colin McCahon, Mondrian's chrysanthemum of 1908, 1971, shown on the link.

There are around 180 flower drawings and paintings overall: a more detailed analysis of the mediums used, subjects and whereabouts will follow.


I came within a reasonable distance of owning a Mondrian soon after developing my interest in the early 2000s: a flower watercolour popped up on eBay with what looked like a reasonable provenance, starting at $200 but only shipping to the USA. I would have been prepared to travel over to pick it up but the sale was withdrawn long before the end.


There is an interesting homage here.


The two images shown are:
C34 Amaryllis, 1907, pencil and watercolour on paper; and
C102 Dahlia, pencil and watercolour on lined paper, from the The Pierpont Morgan Library.

A new Mondrian painting

New to me, at least, and not shown in the Catalogue Raisonné 


Composition with Black, Red, Grey, Yellow and Blue c.1920 (left) is part of the promised gift of Julian and Josie Robertson, in memory of the latter, to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. The piece is described as gouache with traces of pencil laid down on card, 27.8x19.1 cm


It bears a remarkable resemblance (with the exception of size, medium and one small black plane, middle left) to Tableau 1, with Black, Red, Yellow, Blue and Light Black, 1921, oil on canvas, 96.5x60.5 cm (right) which is in the Museum Ludwig, Cologne.