Broadway Boogie Woogie

Piet Mondrian

Oil on canvas

Museum of Modern Art

Broadway Boogie Woogie is an oil on canvas by Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, executed in New York between 1942 and 1943. The work presents a square composition of intersecting yellow lines punctuated by small blocks of red, blue, and gray against a white ground, evoking the grid of Manhattan's streets, the movement of traffic, and the pulsating rhythms of jazz. A co-founder of the De Stijl movement and the originator of Neo-Plasticism, Mondrian had long confined his palette to primary colors and black-and-white grids, but in this late work he abandoned the black grid entirely, breaking his signature color bars into multicolored, staccato segments. The painting stands as a profound synthesis of visual abstraction and urban-musical experience, reflecting the transformative impact of New York City on Mondrian's final creative years.