Lena in interieur 1917

Theo van Doesburg made this watercolor, Lena in Interieur, with washes of color and line to define forms. Look at how the browns, blacks, greens, and blues seem to float on the surface. It's like he’s trying to pin down something elusive. I imagine van Doesburg in his studio, maybe late at night, squinting at his subject. He's really working to distill what he sees into these simple shapes and colors. The geometric abstraction flattens the image. The figure of Lena almost blends into the domestic background. But the way the light hits the collar of her shirt? The angles in her dark tie? Those details bring her forward and give her a special presence. There's a conversation happening here, between realism and abstraction, between seeing and feeling. It reminds me of what Mondrian was working on. Artists are always building on each other's ideas like that, reaching for something new while standing on the shoulders of giants. For Van Doesburg, painting was a way of understanding the world.