Composition XIII 1918

Theo van Doesburg made this painting with oil on canvas, deploying a limited palette of yellow, red, blue, black and white. These colours, of course, were manufactured industrially, making them widely available to artists as a standardized commodity. The painting is flat, and its geometry is uncomplicated, but the effect is not simple. The arrangement and colour choices together create an unexpected dynamism. The coloured rectangles are both contained by and contained within a larger rectangle of white, all achieved through the gestures of painting. The artist has not hidden the fact that this is paint on a canvas. Instead, Composition XIII celebrates the way simple materials and compositional variations can open up endless visual possibilities. Rather than focusing on traditional artistic skill, this work foregrounds design, encouraging us to reconsider the boundary between fine art and the wider field of visual culture.