.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Angela Thomas Schmid has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Painted in 1930, Composition dans le carrée avec couleurs jaune-vert-bleuindigo-orangé is a superb example of Georges Vantongerloo’s idiosyncratic approach to the ideas of the De Stijl movement, in which he adopts a mathematically constructed rectilinear, grid-like composition to explore the elegant inter-relationship of a carefully selected group of colours. Although Vantongerloo arrived in Holland in 1914, a refugee from Belgium having been injured during the opening months of the First World War, it was not until almost four years later, in the spring of 1918, that he first made contact with the artists involved in De Stijl. Approaching Theo van Doesburg with a view to publishing his essay ‘Science and Art’ in the group’s periodical, Vantongerloo quickly became absorbed into this radical group of thinkers, architects, painters and designers, marrying their theories and pioneering aesthetic with his own explorations in abstraction.
Particularly influential for the young artist was the friendship he developed with Piet Mondrian, whose writings on concrete art mirrored his own. While there are obvious parallels between the two artists’ compositions, Vantongerloo allowed a wider range of colour contrasts and relationships to vibrate through his work, expanding on the strictly limited palette of Mondrian to explore the manner in which subtle shifts in tone, hue and saturation altered the visual resonance of his painting. In the present composition, Vantongerloo uses a variety of shades, from a block of bright yellow in the upper left corner, to a dark forest green below it, in order to interrupt the delicate white and grey squares that dominate the composition. These points of vibrant colour enliven the whole painting, imbuing it with a new visual energy, while the lack of thick, dark lines demarcating each of the rectangles allow a more direct interaction between the colours.
According to Max Bill, this painting spent its early years on loan to Robert and Sonia Delaunay, before entering the collection of the Australian painter John Power. Power had saved members of the Abstraction-Création group, including Vantongerloo, from a debt caused by the association’s president, Auguste Herbin. In exchange for covering the debt, Vantongerloo gave the present work to Power, a move which subsequently propelled the Belgian artist to the forefront of the association, and resulted in his election to the prestigious position of vice president and treasurer of the group.
Painted in 1930, Composition dans le carrée avec couleurs jaune-vert-bleuindigo-orangé is a superb example of Georges Vantongerloo’s idiosyncratic approach to the ideas of the De Stijl movement, in which he adopts a mathematically constructed rectilinear, grid-like composition to explore the elegant inter-relationship of a carefully selected group of colours. Although Vantongerloo arrived in Holland in 1914, a refugee from Belgium having been injured during the opening months of the First World War, it was not until almost four years later, in the spring of 1918, that he first made contact with the artists involved in De Stijl. Approaching Theo van Doesburg with a view to publishing his essay ‘Science and Art’ in the group’s periodical, Vantongerloo quickly became absorbed into this radical group of thinkers, architects, painters and designers, marrying their theories and pioneering aesthetic with his own explorations in abstraction.
Particularly influential for the young artist was the friendship he developed with Piet Mondrian, whose writings on concrete art mirrored his own. While there are obvious parallels between the two artists’ compositions, Vantongerloo allowed a wider range of colour contrasts and relationships to vibrate through his work, expanding on the strictly limited palette of Mondrian to explore the manner in which subtle shifts in tone, hue and saturation altered the visual resonance of his painting. In the present composition, Vantongerloo uses a variety of shades, from a block of bright yellow in the upper left corner, to a dark forest green below it, in order to interrupt the delicate white and grey squares that dominate the composition. These points of vibrant colour enliven the whole painting, imbuing it with a new visual energy, while the lack of thick, dark lines demarcating each of the rectangles allow a more direct interaction between the colours.
According to Max Bill, this painting spent its early years on loan to Robert and Sonia Delaunay, before entering the collection of the Australian painter John Power. Power had saved members of the Abstraction-Création group, including Vantongerloo, from a debt caused by the association’s president, Auguste Herbin. In exchange for covering the debt, Vantongerloo gave the present work to Power, a move which subsequently propelled the Belgian artist to the forefront of the association, and resulted in his election to the prestigious position of vice president and treasurer of the group.