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The work we present today is an enigma. Seven vintage photographs taken in Piet Mondrian’s New York Studios (353 East 56th Street and 15 East 59th Street) are adhered to a long board. Daubs of paint in red, blue, and yellow (the primary colors) have been added to the board, along with the block-lettered, red pencil inscription: “P.M. N.Y.C. 1944.” The photographs were taken by Mondrian’s friend and admirer, the artist Fritz Glarner (American, born Switzerland. 1899–1972) on two separate occasions: before and after Mondrian’s death on February 1, 1944. But who would have assembled these photographs in this form? When? And why? We put these questions to Wietse Coppes, Mondrian and De Stijl Curator, Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) and author of the magisterial new book Mondrian and Photography (The Hague and Berlin: RKD and Hatje Cantz, 2023). Coppes has been able to specify that Glarner’s photographs of Mondrian in his 353 East 56th Street studio would have been shot between late 1942 and mid–March 1943; and the posthumous photographs at 15 East 59th Street (where the artist moved in October 1943) between February 2 and March 21, 1944. “I can’t imagine anyone other than Glarner having made this item,” Coppes speculated in an e-mail to Adrian Sudhalter, as “he was probably the only one having access to all the photographs he took. […] Perhaps the color indications were made after the original colors of the wall decorations?” Close-up photographs of Mondrian’s palettes taken after the artist’s death are reproduced in Mondrian and Photography, pp. 276–277, 292–293. Harry Holtzman’s color photographs confirm that the paint on the palettes was red, blue, and yellow. Coppes’s revelatory exhibition Strike a Pose: Mondrian and Photography is currently on view at the Fotomuseum Den Haag (January 14–May 21, 2023).
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