Broadway Boogie Woogie 1943

Piet Mondrian made this square canvas, Broadway Boogie Woogie, with oil paint at some point before his death in 1944. Look at the way the painting buzzes, it's less about solid form and more about this feeling of movement. The surface is alive with yellow, red, and blue rectangles dancing across a grid. It's like the city itself, broken down into pure, rhythmic color. The paint isn't thick or showy; it’s smooth, almost cool, which emphasizes the geometry. But within that cool geometry, there's a pulse, an energy. Look at how the lines are not continuous, they're broken into segments, little dashes of color, giving it this syncopated rhythm. Mondrian was always trying to get at the underlying structure of the world, and in his later work, like this one, you can see him loosening up, finding a kind of freedom within his own rules. You might even see echoes of Paul Klee here, in the playful use of color and line. Art's always in conversation, right? One artist bouncing off another. Broadway Boogie Woogie isn't just a grid; it's a feeling, a beat, an open invitation to see the world in a new way.