Study for a Composition

Piet Mondrian · 1940–41

Medium

Collage of cut and pasted papers, prepared with gouache and charcoal, on pieced cream wove newsprint in three parts with charcoal on verso

Original size

Max: 33 × 27 cm (13 × 10 11/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Modern

This intimate study reveals Mondrian mid-thought, working through the geometric logic that would define his final New York years before committing a composition to canvas. By 1940, Mondrian had fled the war in Europe and arrived in New York, where the city's grid and jazz rhythms reinvigorated his practice. Rather than painting directly, he used cut paper and gouache to shift elements around, treating the picture surface as a problem to be solved through physical rearrangement. The charcoal lines visible beneath the composition show his thinking laid bare — a rare glimpse into the deliberate process behind what can appear deceptively simple. Mondrian was known to pin strips of coloured tape to his studio walls and move them by hand for days, sometimes weeks, before settling on a final arrangement — a working method that made studies like this one central to his practice rather than peripheral to it. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates the clean geometry and subtle tonal relationships of this work into a format built to last, rendered on canvas with the same careful attention to line weight and proportion that Mondrian brought to every decision in the original study.