Composition 2 1929

Piet Mondrian made Composition 2, in what almost looks like an exercise in simple elements: blocks of colour, lines. What hits me first is the surface. It's not perfectly flat. You can see the texture of the canvas, the brushstrokes. It’s like Mondrian wants to remind us that this isn't just an idea, it's a physical object, paint on canvas. Take that big red square – it's not just red. Look closely, and you see the subtle variations in the paint, the way it catches the light. It's almost like the colour is breathing. And those black lines? They're not just boundaries. They're like the scaffolding holding the whole thing together. Mondrian’s process resonates with the work of Agnes Martin, another artist who understood that simplicity can be radical, and abstraction is never truly abstract. It's always connected to something real, something felt. For both artists the magic of painting lies in the tension between the idea and the execution.