Relational Painting Number 64
Fritz Glarner American, born Switzerland
Not on view
Relational Painting Number 64 underscores Piet Mondrian’s impact on midcentury abstraction. Glarner adopted Mondrian’s simplified vocabulary of forms and colors, but he modified the Dutch artist’s severe geometry by introducing diagonal lines that changed rectangles into trapezoids and created irregular rhythmical patterns. Glarner also employed shades of gray for the lines in contrast to Mondrian’s use of black. These alterations added spatial dimensions to his compositions as well as a sense of movement and vitality that evokes urban architecture and dynamism.