Rare Piet Mondrian auctioned for record amount

Piet Mondrian is considered a pioneer of abstract art. The artist gained world fame in Paris and New York when he painted the "Composition with Yellow, Red, Black, Blue and Gray. Rarely does a 'Mondrian' appear at auctions. Yet this week a work from the artist's early years went under the hammer and an announcement has been made for a work that is expected to fetch a record sum....

Monday, Oct. 10, 2022
11:22
By: Fleur De Jong

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Piet Mondrian's birth. Mondrian grew up in a strict Calvinist family. His father was a schoolteacher and preferred not to see him become an artist, yet he did not let himself be sidetracked and went after his dream. He moved into a home on the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam in 1892 and painted mostly portraits and landscapes early in his career. The oil painting recently sold features these early years and shows the interior of an Achterhoek farmhouse.

Rare

In 1911 Mondrian was in Paris, where he first encountered Cubism, and gradually his art moved toward the abstract. In 1920, he finally achieved world fame with Composition with yellow, red, black, blue and gray .. The work called Composition No. ll. It was recently announced that this artwork will be auctioned in November in New York and is expected to cost € 50.7 million. The artist's works from this period are mainly owned by museums and very rarely come on the market.

Composition No. ll has a chance to become Mondrian's most expensive ever auctioned work, currently Composition No. lll is the record holder, having gone under the hammer in 2015 for € 51.3 million.