Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow
Oil on canvas by Piet Mondrian (1930). Grid of black lines dividing a white ground into asymmetric rectangles, with a red square occupying the upper right, a small blue rectangle lower left, and a small yellow rectangle lower right. Paradigmatic statement of Neoplasticism. Held at Kunsthaus Zürich.
Panofsky 3-Level Analysis
Visible description — no named figures
A square canvas (approximately 46 × 46 cm). The surface is divided by black lines — horizontal and vertical only (no diagonals). These lines vary slightly in width and divide the white-painted ground into several rectangular fields. Three fields contain flat color: upper right, a large square area of red; lower left, a narrow rectangle of blue; lower right, a small rectangle of yellow. The remaining fields are white. The lines extend to the canvas edges. The composition is asymmetric but the visual weight appears roughly balanced. No figures, objects, text, or gradients are present.
Direct visual description; uncontested.
Named figures, narrative program
No narrative. The Neoplastic formal vocabulary is itself the content. Mondrian's choice of precisely three primary colors in asymmetric balance enacts the Neoplastic principle: dynamic equilibrium through oppositions.
Source: Mondrian, 'Le Néo-Plasticisme' (1920); Mondrian, 'Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art' (1937)
Formal classification is uncontested and explicitly theorized by Mondrian himself.
Cultural & symbolic interpretation
Source: Mondrian, 'Le Néo-Plasticisme' (1920); Carel Blotkamp, 'Mondrian: The Art of Destruction' (1994); Robert Welsh, 'Mondrian's Philosophical Background' (1973)
Theosophical interpretation is documented in Mondrian's own theoretical writings and extensively analyzed in secondary literature.