Piet Mondrian (1872-1957)

The heirs of the Dutch artist filed a lawsuit in a US court seeking the return of 4 paintings and damages for an additional 4 artworks, most like sold or exchanged, from the Kunstmuseen Krefeld. The lawsuit alleges that the paintings, valued at $200M, were loaned to the museum in 1929 and never returned. (artnet)

The heirs of Piet Mondrian are demanding that the Philadelphia Museum of Art returns a 1926 abstract painting. They claim that the painting, now estimated at $100M, was seized from a German museum in 1937 and sold in New York by Karl Buchholz, a dealer who was assigned by the Nazis to sell “degenerate” art for profit.

50 years after Piet Mondrian’s birth on March 7, 1872, Basel’s Fondation Beyeler’s “Mondrian Evolution” exhibition is exploring his style leading up to the famous grids, through October 9. It shows Mondrian’s evolution through “genre paintings… theosophical Symbolist works… and Cubist canvases”. (Smithsonian Mag)

Curator Susanne Meyer-Büser discovered that Piet Mondrian’s New York City 1 (1941) had been installed incorrectly for decades whilst planning a new exhibition dedicated to the modernist in Düsseldorf. Mondrian’s painting was most likely hung the wrong way when it was first installed at MoMA in 1945. (The Times)

George Sarmantzopoulos led the Greek police to the paintings by Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian. He reportedly spent more than six months planning the theft—according to his lawyer he had become obsessed with the pieces as an art lover and had not intended to sell them. (Smithsonian)

Woman's Head was found alongside a painting of a windmill by Piet Mondrian, hidden at a gorge on the outskirts of the city–one Greek man has been arrested. The painting by Picasso had been given to the British National Gallery by the artist in 1949, in recognition of the country's resistance to Nazi Germany. (BBC)

The Los Angeles museum recently acquired 39 Dutch drawings from a private collector. Included in the purchase are works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Jacob Ruisdael, Gerrit van Honthorst and a watercolour by Piet Mondrian. The curator of drawings Stephanie Schrader spearheaded the acquisition.

Reading the names in the catalogue – Piet Mondrian, Mikhail Larionov, Marcel Janco, Wolfgang Paalen, Enrico Prampolini, and André Kertész, with the only photographic lot – you could say that many of the key avant-gardes of the first half of the 20th century...

Unlike abstract expressionist painters, Willem de Kooning never completely banished figuration from his work. A nude or a landscape might be lurking beneath these superimposed colors and black lines.

On 10 November 2017 at Drouot, the same auction house is selling a selection from the personal collection of art critic, poet, historian of Abstraction and artist Michel Seuphor (1901-1999), which had remained in his estate. Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)...