Composition with Grid 1 1918

Piet Mondrian created 'Composition with Grid 1' with oil paint on canvas. Mondrian's geometric paintings involved an intensive process of layering and refining. The visible brushstrokes and textures reveal his hand in the work, yet the goal was a sense of machine-like precision. How did he negotiate that conflict? He used tape to get the black lines sharp and straight, and would spend hours mixing the colors to get them just right. The color application is flat, but not without nuance. Mondrian’s work aimed at universal harmony through abstraction. There's a tension here between the physical act of painting and the utopian ideals that inspired it. He was after something beyond the individual, beyond the handmade, but he could only get there through slow, deliberate work. By attending to the making, we can understand the layers of meaning embedded in the painting.