HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS IS GIVEN IMPORTANT MONDRIAN PAINTING

Acquired from the Original Owners, Mondrian Painting Is in Extremely Fine Condition: Never Damaged or Restored, Still in Its Original Wooden Strip Frame

Cambridge, MA – January 7, 2000 – James Cuno, the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums, announced today that the Busch-Reisinger Museum has acquired its first painting by one of the century’s greatest masters of geometric abstraction, Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872-1944). Composition with Blue, Black, Yellow and Red (1922) is an exceptionally well-preserved example of the artist’s "classic" period, clearly showing Mondrian’s painterly sensibility-—shiny black lines and delicately brushed fields, subtle gray hues and bold primaries, and careful adjustment of lines and planes as they reach the painting’s edge.

While many paintings by Mondrian have been damaged by overly aggressive conservation treatment, Composition with Blue, Black, Yellow and Red is in impeccable condition. For decades the design of Mondrian’s works was considered the most critical aspect of his art while the carefully developed surfaces were not given equal importance. The artist’s painstaking and specific application of paint, the considered direction of each brushstroke, and the particular finishes, either matte or shiny, were often lost in poor or misguided conservation treatments. In addition, the frames of many of the artist’s works have been altered or lost during treatment or in preparation for travel. The exceptional condition of Composition with Blue, Black, Yellow and Red, which is still in its original strip frame, makes it especially significant for research and professional training at Harvard and for scholars who visit the Museums to use its resources.

The first painting by Mondrian to enter Harvard’s collections, Composition with Blue, Black, Yellow and Red has been given to the Busch-Reisinger Museum by the family of the original owners of the work, with additional support from an anonymous donor and the Friends of the Busch-Reisinger Museum. The painting was sold by the artist in 1925 and has remained in the collections of the family of the original owners since then. It has been publicly exhibited only once, in 1995, at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., as part of its presentation of the 1995 Mondrian retrospective (co-organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague).

"Composition with Blue, Black, Yellow and Red is both a beautiful work and an ideal object of technical study, historical research, and lasting aesthetic contemplation," said Cuno. "Its pristine condition and intimate scale allow us to see clearly the astonishing craft of this groundbreaking artist and will help the Art Museums to further their important scholarship in this field. We are extremely grateful to the family of the original owners for their generous assistance in helping us acquire this painting, as well as to an anonymous donor and the Friends of the Busch-Reisinger Museum who helped support this important acquisition. We are especially pleased that they chose Harvard as the home for the painting. They wanted to place it in an institution that would ensure its accessibility for research and study. With Mondrian specialists such as Yve-Alain Bois, Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. Professor of Modern Art at Harvard and co-author of the catalogue of the 1995 Mondrian retrospective organized by Angelica Zander Rudenstine, and Harry A. Cooper, Associate Curator of Modern Art at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum, we are just such a museum."

"Piet Mondrian exerted an immeasurable influence on the art, architecture and design of the 20th century. As the first painting by Mondrian ever to enter the Art Museums’ permanent collections, this addition joins key works by Kandinsky, El Lissitzky, Beckmann, Matisse, Picasso, and Pollock, demonstrating the Museums’ commitment to modern art and further strengthening the Museums’ extensive collection of European abstraction," noted Cooper.

Composition with Blue, Black, Yellow and Red is a significant addition to the collection of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, which is devoted to the art of the German-speaking countries and related cultures of central and northern Europe. This work was painted during the prolific period that followed Mondrian's invention of the style he called neo-plasticism. Mondrian wrote extensively about his new pictorial language in the pages of the Dutch journal De Stijl (The Style). An international movement as well as a magazine, De Stijl called for the unification of the arts under the banner of spiritual progress and social change. While this is the first painting by Mondrian to enter the collections of the Harvard University Art Museums, Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum also has a superb example of the artist’s early landscape drawings, dating from circa 1907.

The Busch-Reisinger Museum is world-renowned for its collection of German Expressionist painting and sculpture, 1920s Central European abstraction, especially the work of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Paul Klee, El Lissitzky and Wassily Kandinsky, and works in all media by the artists of the Bauhaus. Its collections of German Expressionism, Vienna Secession art, 1920s abstraction, and works by Joseph Beuys rank among the finest in the United States.

"It is a great honor to be entrusted with this important painting," said Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum. "It is an extraordinary example of Mondrian's radically bold aesthetic, which students and scholars from the United States and abroad will now be able to examine in the larger context of our collections in this area. Given Mondrian’s ties to El Lissitzky as well as artists of the Bauhaus, Composition with Blue, Black, Yellow and Red will greatly complement our holdings in this area and provide new areas for study and research."

Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums is one of the leading arts institutions in the United States and the world. It is distinguished by the range and depth of its collections, its groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original research of its staff. For more than a century, it has been the nation’s premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars and is renowned for its seminal and ongoing role in the development of the discipline of art history in this country.

The three Harvard University art museums—the Fogg Art Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum—are all outstanding institutions in their respective fields. The Fogg also houses the Straus Center for Conservation, a leader in the research and development of scientific and technology-based analysis of art. The 150,000 objects in the Art Museums’ collections range in date from ancient times to the present and come from Europe, North America, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. Each Museum also has an active program of special exhibitions that promotes new scholarship in its areas of focus.

As an integral component of the Harvard University community, the Art Museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension to their areas of study and to their lives at and after Harvard. The Museums welcome the public to experience the collections and special exhibitions as well as to enjoy lectures, symposia, and other programs.

The collections are divided among ten curatorial areas (Ancient and Byzantine Art and Numismatics; Architecture and Design; Asian Art; Busch-Reisinger Museum; Drawings; Islamic and Later Indian Art; Modern and Contemporary Art; Paintings, Sculpture and Decorative Arts; Prints; and Photographs) and are encyclopedic within those areas. Developed with an emphasis on their value for teaching and research, these holdings are a uniquely broad and rich resource that are continually enhanced through gifts and acquisitions. Together, the holdings of the three museums comprise one of the finest university art collections in the world, with resources rivaling those of many major public museums.