Auction house Christie's has announced that a Mondrian painting, valued between $23 and $35 million, will be the most significant work by the artist at a European auction since 2009. In 2009, works from the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé collection, 'Composition with blue, red, yellow and black' and 'Composition I', were sold at auction.
According to the auction house, this painting is being offered for sale for the first time, and it will take place on October 14. Christie's noted that 'Composition III', painted in 1920, reflects a key moment in the artist's career when he created the first innovative examples of his visionary Neoplastic style.
In the same year, Mondrian completed only eight significant works, five of which are held in the collections of world-renowned museums: Tate in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome, and the Wilhelm Haken Museum in Ludwigshafen.
Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) was born in Utrecht, Netherlands, and studied painting at the Academy of Amsterdam. He held his first solo exhibition there in 1909, according to biographical data on the Tate website. Shortly thereafter, he developed a simplified abstract style, which he called 'Neoplasticism,' characterized by the limitation to three primary colors and a grid of black vertical and horizontal lines on a white background.