Page 47 - Wax Fusion Spring 2022 Issue 6 WIP v19

They fractured space into a floating matrix of geometric shards

that other avant-garde artists would then pass through and
reinvent for themselves.

Thus emerged the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian’s floating grids

with primary colors, black, white, and gray. However, this was
not simply a formal rebellion. Mondrian, as with many of turn

of the century avant-garde artists, was absorbing religious and
metaphysical ideas and working toward a way to express them.

He spent years
dancing a

partnered push
and pull with
verticals and

horizontals. He
first painted

trees, seas,
and still lifes

until he broke
through to

pure non-
objectivity. He

expressed, not
how things

looked, but
how things

nestled into
the warp and

weft of the
fabric of the
universe.

Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Gray
Piet Mondrian
Oil on canvas, 23 5/8 × 23 5/8 in
Gift of Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., The Art Institute of Chicago

47