Despite the discovery, the canvas of 1941 will continue to be exposed in the bad so as not to risk damaging it.
Le Monde with afp
“New York City 1”, a painting produced in 1941 by the abstract Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, was hung for 77 years in the wrong direction, discovered those responsible for the Kunstsammlung museum in Dusseldorf, where he is currently exposed to the ‘Occasion of a large retrospective.
“On a photo of 1944, I saw that the canvas was in the other direction on an easel. It intrigued me,” said Süddeutsche Zeitung Susanne Meyer on Saturday October 29th in an interview with the German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Büser, the exhibition commissioner.
Painting, composed of several red, yellow and blue lines crossing in right angles, was then exposed to MOMA in New York “a year later”, in the wrong direction, according to Ms. Meyer-Büser. When it was transmitted to the Dusseldorf museum in 1980, the table was redisposed in the same way.
inspired by New York skills 2>
The error could come from the fact that “the painting did not have a signature”, according to Ms. Meyer-Büser. His meaning was therefore determined by “the name of the artist inscribed on the back of the framework by the administrator of the succession”, during the death of Mondrian, in 1944.
Despite all the evidence indicating that the work is currently exposed upside down, the work will not be returned. “Adhesive tapes are already extremely loose and only hold a thread,” said Meyer-Büser. “If we had to return it now, gravity would draw him in another direction. And (this error) is now part of the history of the work.”
Piet Mondrian, born in 1872, is one of the main figures of the Dutch artistic movement called “de Stijl” (“style”, in French), known for its horizontal and vertical lines and its primary colors.
In 1940, the painter left for the United States in New York. The rectilinear grids of its paintings are inspired by the route and skyscrapers of the American city. He is known worldwide in particular for his canvas “Victory Boogie Woogie”, considered one of the most important works of the 20th e century.