Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Gray

Piet Mondrian, 1921

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Artist: Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872–1944)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 60 × 60 cm (23 5/8 × 23 5/8 in.)
Museum: Art Institute of Chicago
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

Piet Mondrian, a painter of the revolutionary international movement De Stijl (the Style), argued that "the straight line tells the truth." Why, then, we might wonder, would he choose to hang a painting off axis, where its edges imply dynamic diagonals? Among other motivations, rotating the canvas allowed Mondrian to reconsider a question he spent his career exploring, namely, the relationship between the contents of a painting and what contains them.

In Lozenge Composition, the squared-off black lines imply enclosure, while a single line (above the blue area) extends to the slanted edge, suggesting extension beyond the canvas. This implication of what might lie beyond also prompted Mondrian to invoke the full expanse of the wall by hanging diagonal paintings well above eye level.

Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0.