Gray tree

The gray tree
Piet Mondrian , 1911
Oil on canvas
79.7 × 109 cm
The Hague Art Museum , The Hague

The gray tree (De grijze boom) is a black and white painting by Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) from 1911. It is one of the early works of Cubism .

Emergence

The picture was taken in 1911, according to Welsh / Joosten. It is not the only representation of a tree by Mondrian. 1908–1910 Avond was created; De rode boom [evening; The red tree], also in the Art Museum The Hague, a painting in which elements of realistic representation are still given. In 1912 he painted a Bloeiende appelboom in Paris , also in The Hague. The painting Boom A , which hangs in the Tate Gallery in London, is dated “around 1913” . In the two later works, Mondrian has come completely into abstraction .

After his training at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten , Mondrian worked as a drawing teacher and was often out and about in the countryside around Amsterdam and Amstelveen - to paint watercolors. The picture stands at the transition from representational representation to pure abstract form. Even without a title, the subject would still be recognizable, probably not with Boom A, which emerged two years later . Mondrian tries to reduce complexity ; he is no longer interested in the thickness of a branch or the correct arrangement of the branches, but in the curvature of the lines. A few years later he became famous for his geometric constructions, horizontal and vertical black lines and primary colors. This work stands for his search for an art that can stand on its own. He named “de nieuwe beelding”, the new image, as a goal.

Image description

Light and shadow, the contrasts between light and dark characterize the structure. The painting does not use any primary, secondary or tertiary colors, only many different shades of gray, from dark white to light black, a very reduced palette. At first glance the picture looks symmetrical, but it isn't. The focus is not in the golden section , but exactly in the center of the picture, the middle of the vertical and the horizontal. The picture shows different shapes, round, conical, square. The trunk of the tree weighs no more than the branches. On closer inspection, there are clearly discernible differences between left and right, between above and below. The number of branches is different on the two halves of the picture and they point in different directions. The representation is two-dimensional, the depth of the landscape is dispensed with. The foreground and background seem to be interwoven. The lighting mood is gloomy. The composition oscillates between figure and form.

Paris is indicated as the place of origin with a question mark. Indeed, the picture stands on the threshold of Mondrian's Cubism, which - perhaps a little later than Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso , who painted abstract as early as 1908 - nevertheless represents a very independent style.

Provenance

The Dutch real estate agent and art collector Salomon B. Slijper (1884–1971) bought the painting directly from the artist. It bore the inv./cat.nr 765. From 1954 the painting hung on loan from the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, today's Kunstmuseum Den Haag . Slijper bequeathed his extensive Mondrian collection to the museum and so the museum came into possession of the picture in 1971. It then bore the inv./cat.nr 156–1971 / 0334314.

The painting was also featured in one of the major Mondrian exhibitions of 2017. In the video between 06:55 and 07:25 it is easy to see that the picture is exactly on the threshold between representational painting and abstraction.

Mondrian tree representations

Here in chronological order:

• 

  1908-1910

• 

  1911

• 

  1912

• 

  around 1913

literature

• John Milner: Mondrian , First American Edition, Phaidon Press 1992, ISBN 1-55859-400-0 , pp. 98 f
• Joop M. Joosten, Robert P. Welsh: Piet Mondrian: Catalog Raisonné , English original edition, Prestel, Munich, New York 1998, ISBN 3-7913-1698-2
• Will Gompertz: "Dat kan mijn klein zuje ook: Waarom modern art is art", JM Meulenhoff 2020, ISBN 978-9029094153

Web links

• Gemeentemuseum Den Haag fourth 100 jaar Mondriaan en De Stijl (netherlands)
• ART ANALYSIS: 'DE GRIJZE BOOM' (Dutch)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} RKD: Piet Mondriaan The gray tree, 1911 , accessed on February 25, 2020
2. ↑ Kunstmuseum Den Haag: Documentaire 'De ontdekking van Mondriaan' (on Vimeo), accessed on June 30, 2020