Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow

This painting is a representation of how the war and terrifying consequences faced by people who are not complying with it but are merely in the same geography is defined. The overpowering power hunger of the warriors, and passion built around the threat and urgency, the disruption caused to the stabilty of commoners, and their need to go back to normalcy and serenity, and very little portion of joy, amidst all this chaos is when one thinks about and reminisces the good. This is what was done to them and what they wanted both in one image. Separated by black lines and textured white blocks echoing the disrupted peace, and disunity. A painting of colour blocks, almost like the ones they hang in kindergarten schools carries the emotional weight of unsaid pain afflicted by war on generations.

Piet Mondrian was in some way affected by both WWI and WWII. First time he was restricted to travel back home from his native in Netherlands. Maybe since he was in his native that provided him a lot of perspective on how war and conflict has to be approached, resolved, or rather avoided. The time there gave him the time to think about what unity means, for people of different countries, faiths, people who speak different languages, and follow different customs. A painting with recognisable subjects would become a record of a specific event. He wanted to leave the person to find their stage on his painting to tell their story, not the story of how he was forced to stay. He wanted the "Ultimate" Visual Language. He co-founded an entire art movement with a Dutch painter, architect, and writer Theo Van Doesburg around it and called it De Stijil (The Style).The Style that leaves traditional art aesthetics behind, a movement that carries the weight of real world struggles, pain, and solutions, rather than a convergent subjective decorative wall hanger.

Piet Mondrian saw the WWII coming ahead, and he was living a harmonious life and was aware that it was going to be affected. And that is when he painted this, why he was aware of the destruction of what was perfectly functional and beautiful around him. This awareness that he had, and that he instilled on people was a threat to the reign chasers, or ideology extremists. His works were later declared as degenerate during WWII by Hitler. His studio was burnt, he fled to Paris, then to New York as a refugee, he lived what he feared for decades. But this painting would have lacked its meaning if he had not lived what he feared and expressed. And when did express he was clear that he was not going to name it after what his fear was, or what affected him, but as Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow. A title that allows me, a woman from 2026 to relate with it. The ongoing war, and the fear of WWIII, makes anyone now, after nearly a century of this being painted to find themselves in the grids.