Composition X

Like many other European artists, the Dutchman Piet Mondrian profited from exchanges with creative currents in pre-war Paris (before 1914), where numerous artists and artist groups, including the ‘Fauves’ and the Cubists, experimented with new pictorial forms. From Holland Mondrian had brought with him ideas and motifs which he subjected to radical transformation, especially under the influence of George Braque. The changes that trees, a motif especially important for Mondrian, underwent in these years, illustrate his artistic development. He transformed the tree into a structure that organizes and gives rhythm to pictorial space. The composition formulates a sensitive balance of horizontal and vertical forces into which primary colors are inserted. Mondrian himself saw this painting as an analogy for cosmic order, whose regularity he wished to depict.