According to an art historian quoted in The Guardian, a painting by the renowned Dutch artist Piet Mondrian has been hung upside down at art galleries for the past 75 years.
“New York City 1,” a 1941 abstract painting, is representative of the neoplastic style; adhesive-tape lines in primary colors cross to form rectangles.
Since 1980, the artwork has been on exhibit at the art collection of the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Dusseldorf. It was first displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1945.
The picture has been displayed with the yellow, red, and blue at the bottom for decades. Art historians believed it to portray a cityscape.
However, curator Susanne Meyer-Büser told The Guardian that she learned this was an error while researching a new exhibition, Evolution, which opens this Saturday in Dusseldorf.
The Guardian quotes Meyer-Büser as saying, “The thickening of the grid should be at the top, like a dark sky.” “Once I brought it to the attention of the other curators, we saw how blatant it was. I am 100 percent confident that the image is inverted.”
Several signs show that the painting has been displayed incorrectly over the past 75 years.
The lines of a comparable painting on exhibit in Paris, New York City, are thicker at the top of the canvas. And a shot from Mondrian’s studio, taken days after the Dutch painter’s death, depicts the identical painting on an easel with the lines thickening toward the top.
“Was it a mistake when the artwork was removed from its box? Was someone careless when the work was being transported?” Meyer-Büser explained to The Guardian. It is not feasible to say.
To protect the artwork, it will be displayed in the same orientation as it has been for decades.
“The adhesive tapes are already exceedingly loose and hanging by a thread,” Meyer-Büser was quoted as saying by The Guardian. “If you were to flip it over, gravity would pull it in a different direction. It is now a component of the work’s narrative.”
Mondrian is regarded as one of the 20th century’s greatest abstract artists. In 1914, he stated, “Art is superior to reality and has no direct relationship to reality.”