Composition No. 1 with Grey and Red 1938 / Composition with Red 1939

Piet Mondrian

Oil on canvas

Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Composition No. 1 with Grey and Red 1938 / Composition with Red 1939 is an oil on canvas painting executed by Piet Mondrian during his two-year residence in London, as the threat of World War II was intensifying. The work exemplifies the mature phase of his Neo-Plastic method: horizontal and vertical black lines intersect on a near-square canvas, creating asymmetrically balanced rectangular fields restricted to red, white, grey, and black — among the more coloristically austere examples of his late Paris and London period. Mondrian (1872–1944), a Dutch painter and co-founder of the De Stijl movement, developed Neo-Plasticism as a universal visual language in which only primary colors, black, white, and the two cardinal directions were permitted, seeking to express, as he believed, truths that underlie nature but are concealed in its random appearances. The painting bears two titles because Mondrian reworked it, removing a grey rectangle present in the 1938 state, and it was subsequently acquired by Peggy Guggenheim by November 1939, entering one of the twentieth century's most celebrated private collections.