Author Description

The exhibition includes 17 works by Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and 20 by Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967). Works from the early, middle and late periods of each artist will be on view. In the 1940s, American Ad Reinhardt was a young artist creating abstract work which reflected the influences of Paul Klee and Stuart Davis among others. It was ultimately the work of Dutchman Piet Mondrian, however, which provided Reinhardt a key to unlock his own artistic discoveries at the end of the decade. Arne Glimcher writes in the accompanying exhibition catalogue: “Reinhardt created an art of harmony and balance no less emotionally intense than Mondrian’s. With access to all of Mondrian’s historical work as well as his contemporary New York achievements, by the early 1950s Reinhardt decided that his path was not to be the dynamic asymmetrical “compositional” tensions taken by Mondrian in the 1920s, but rather one of symmetry and balance suggested by Mondrian’s 1912-17 work and especially his f