Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) — Distinctive black grid lines and brightly colored squares, by Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, are among the most exciting paintings in abstract art.
Currently, one of his most valuable paintings is up for auction and is expected to fetch more than $50 million, according to Sosby’s auction house.
The painting entitled “Composition No. 2”, which features Mondrian’s artistic characteristics, will be auctioned at Sosby on November 14.
The auction house reported the artwork, which includes squares in blue, red, white and yellow, as “one of the most important and most valuable works of art ever by the artist, offered for sale.”
Julien Does, Head of Impressionist and Modern Art in the Americas at Sotheby’s, said in a statement Thursday: “Pitt Mondrian’s core works are rarely offered at auction, many of which are housed by the most famous museum collections around the world.” .
He added that the opportunity to obtain a painting of this quality is “indeed an event that only happens once in a generation.”
The painting, painted by Mondrian in 1930, was previously auctioned in 1983.
Sosby indicated that the artwork is one of only three that shows the dominant red square in the top right.
“Composition No. 2” embodies everything you might ask of Mondrian’s style. It is an essential painting for the development of modern art and is a symbol of the enduring appeal of a modern aesthetic, characterized by a calm sense of compositional balance and spatial order, and a remarkable origin, Dawes said.
Mondrian moved to Paris early in 1912, following being impressed by the early Cubist work of artists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.
There, he began to experiment with the abstract and fragmented method of representing reality, increasingly using only vertical and horizontal lines.
In the year of his famous painting, the American sculptor Alexander Calder visited Mondrian’s studio in Paris, and stated that the walls were “painted white, divided by black lines, and rectangles as brightly colored as his paintings,” according to the press release.
In the statement, Oliver Parker, Sosby’s Europe Headquarters, said: “There are few artists who have staked such a bold claim in modern art history as Piet Mondrian, whose lattice style of abstract painting is a truly unique achievement in the history of painting.”
“The work is charged with electricity that reflects the energy of painting in Europe at the time, and remains as vibrant as it was when it was painted nearly 100 years ago,” he added.
It is worth noting that Mondrian’s unique geometric style and modern approach preceded the rise of abstract art during the 1940s and 1950s.
