Composition XX 1920

Theo van Doesburg made this painting, Composition XX, with oil on canvas, using the simplest colors and forms. I love how this work shows that painting can be about a process of breaking things down. Look at the surface, the way it's built up with layers. The paint isn’t trying to hide itself. The colors, red, blue, yellow, black, grey, and white are laid down in blocks, letting us see the texture of each stroke, of each patch. See how the grey area sort of sits above the yellow block next to it, like the ghost of a thought hovering over a bright idea. The lines are so clean they are like hard boundaries. The colors feel like an industrial landscape, but maybe this is just me? Van Doesburg was really interested in pushing art towards pure abstraction and he reminds me a bit of Mondrian. You know, it's like these artists were all talking to each other, trying to figure out how much you can strip away and still have something that feels, that means, something. It's a question that’s still open for discussion.