Composition of Red and White: Nom 1 / Composition No. 4 with Red and Blue

Piet Mondrian

Oil on canvas

Saint Louis Art Museum

This work by Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) is a paradigmatic example of his mature Neoplasticist practice, rendered in oil on canvas using his signature formal vocabulary of horizontal and vertical black lines, primary color blocks, and fields of white. Begun in Paris in 1938, the painting was reworked progressively as Mondrian moved first to London and then to New York City in 1940, where he added improvisational color blocks at the edges and modified the line structure, giving the composition an added energy he associated with jazz. A principal figure of the De Stijl movement, Mondrian devoted his career to reducing painting to its essential elements—straight lines, rectangles, and the primary colors—in pursuit of what he called universal beauty through Neoplasticism. Now held in the collection of the Saint Louis Art Museum, this canvas stands as one of the most thoroughly documented examples of Mondrian's transatlantic working method.