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united states of americaconcept:era modern

Broadway Boogie-Woogie

Oil on canvas (1942–1943) by Piet Mondrian, his last completed painting. The rigid black gridlines of classic De Stijl are replaced by fragmented yellow, red, and blue segments — a visual response to New York's streets and jazz rhythms.

Scholarly Significance

Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie records the liberation of De Stijl grids through jazz and New York urbanism. Complements the existing Composition II node with Mondrian's late style.

Notes

  • ·Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) fled the German bombing of London in 1940 and settled in New York City, where the jazz scene and city grid transformed his work.
  • ·In Broadway Boogie-Woogie, the usual black lines of De Stijl are replaced by broken segments of yellow (the streets), punctuated with red and blue (the traffic, the neon).
  • ·The title refers to New York's Broadway thoroughfare and boogie-woogie, a syncopated jazz piano style Mondrian loved to dance to.
  • ·It was Mondrian's last completed painting; he died in February 1944 before finishing Victory Boogie-Woogie.
  • ·Purchased by MoMA in 1943, shortly before Mondrian's death.