{"product_id":"piet-mondrian-lozenge-composition-with-yellow-black-blue-red-and-gray-1921-giclee-print","title":"Piet Mondrian – Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Gray, 1921 | Giclée Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eA square canvas hung on its point. The black bands stay level with the floor, so they run off the edges at four diagonals, and the picture stops looking like something held inside a frame and starts looking like a piece cut out of a field that continues past it. That is the whole argument of Mondrian's abstraction, and the diamond is where he makes it plainest.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1921 is the year it comes together.\u003c\/strong\u003e Back in Paris after the war, Mondrian spends 1920 and 1921 clearing out the last of the regular grid he had been working with, and arrives at what he called Neoplasticism: unequal rectangles, bands of unequal weight, three primaries and nothing else. He painted only about seventeen of these lozenges in his life. This is one of them, from the year the language was finished.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat this is.\u003c\/strong\u003e A giclée reproduction printed with pigment inks from the Art Institute of Chicago's own open-access photograph of the canvas. It is not a painting and is not sold as one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eScale\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eOriginal: 60 × 60 cm canvas, hung on its point — 84.85 cm from side tip to side tip. Oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e50 × 50 cm \/ 19.7 × 19.7 in\u003c\/strong\u003e — reduced, 0.49× original. Image 41.46 × 42.00 cm.\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003e70 × 70 cm \/ 27.6 × 27.6 in\u003c\/strong\u003e — reduced, 0.62× original. Image 52.43 × 53.11 cm, at exactly 300 dpi.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhy it stops at 0.62×.\u003c\/strong\u003e The museum's file carries 6193 pixels across the diamond. On the large sheet that works out at exactly 300 dpi for an image 52.43 cm wide — our floor, to the pixel, and the file is printed there without a single pixel resampled. The house border would have wanted 58.8 cm, which would mean upscaling, so the sides run wider than usual instead. The file decides this sheet, not the paper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe grey corners.\u003c\/strong\u003e A diamond cannot fill a rectangle. The museum photographed the canvas against a plain light grey, and any rectangular crop therefore keeps grey in the four corners. We could only remove it by cutting the picture out of its background, which is retouching, and we do not retouch. So the grey stays, the object sits in it as it was photographed, and you can see the soft shadow the canvas casts at the lower tip. What you are looking at is a photograph of a painting, printed honestly, rather than a diagram of one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAnd the edge of the stretcher.\u003c\/strong\u003e The picture was photographed from very slightly above, so along the two lower edges you see the depth of the canvas turning away — about a centimetre of it. That is why our crop is 1.1 cm taller than it is wide, although the canvas is square. We measured it rather than squaring it up.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOn the borders.\u003c\/strong\u003e On the small sheet the image takes the house width, 84 % of the sheet measured on the taller side: 4.27 cm at each side, 3.72 above and 4.28 below. On the large sheet the file sets the size, which leaves 8.79 cm at the sides, 7.86 above and 9.03 below. Both sit at optical centre, 1:1.15, not in the middle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhat you will not get.\u003c\/strong\u003e Most Mondrian posters are not reproductions at all. They are redrawn in software: perfect black, flat colour, mathematically straight bands. This is the canvas itself — the weave, the slightly grey white, the bands that wobble where a hand drew them, the small dark loss at the bottom corner. It looks less perfect than the poster, and that is the point.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eProvenance\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nPiet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872–1944), \u003cem\u003eLozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Gray\u003c\/em\u003e, 1921.\u003cbr\u003e\nOil on canvas, 60 × 60 cm.\u003cbr\u003e\nArt Institute of Chicago, Gift of Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., acc. no. 1957.307 (AIC object 109819).\u003cbr\u003e\nPublic domain. The museum publishes its photograph under CC0.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe print\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\nGiclée on 200 gsm FSC-certified fine art paper, twelve pigment inks. White border, optical centre. The colour of the museum's file is kept, not corrected. Unframed. Shipped rolled in a tube.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFurther reading\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"\/blogs\/notes\/why-this-print-is-not-bigger\"\u003eWhy This Print Is Not Bigger\u003c\/a\u003e — how the file, not the sheet, sets the ceiling.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Museartis","offers":[{"title":"50 × 50 cm \/ 19.7 × 19.7 in — Reduced, 0.49× original","offer_id":65802466066781,"sku":"MUS-049-5050","price":59.0,"currency_code":"CHF","in_stock":true},{"title":"70 × 70 cm \/ 27.6 × 27.6 in — Reduced, 0.62× original","offer_id":65802466099549,"sku":"MUS-049-7070","price":109.0,"currency_code":"CHF","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1102\/7139\/8237\/files\/museartis-mondrian-lozenge-plate.jpg?v=1788458574","url":"https:\/\/museartis.com\/products\/piet-mondrian-lozenge-composition-with-yellow-black-blue-red-and-gray-1921-giclee-print","provider":"Museartis","version":"1.0","type":"link"}