Alberi 1908

Piet Mondrian created this small landscape painting, ‘Alberi,’ using oil on canvas. I can almost feel him out there, squinting at the light as it filters through those trees. Look at the sky, a haze of warm neutrals, achieved by confident daubs of layered paint. It feels like he’s really working through something here, building the image with these strokes, this calligraphic dance. See how the marks are chunky and loaded, so that they almost detach from their subject? I feel like he's trying to capture not just what’s in front of him, but also some kind of feeling, maybe a sense of longing or peace? I imagine him thinking of the impressionist painters such as Cézanne. This painting is a conversation between artists, stretching across time. These artists ask us to slow down, and see what is really there.