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New York City 2[unfinished, formerly New York City III]
Piet Mondrian Dutch
Not on view
Mondrian developed this grid with commercial adhesive tape. Clues such as clusters of pushpin holes, pencil outlines, and unpainted patches show how the artist adjusted the composition over time, paying special attention to how the bands overlapped. The fact that he had already begun to replace tape with paint suggests that the work was close to being finished. Unlike charcoal, adhesive tape lends itself to change and variation, and it allowed Mondrian to experiment indefinitely. This unfinished work, made one year after he immigrated to the United States, documents how he gradually started to exchange the black bands of his earlier pictures for colored ones - an optimistic response, perhaps, to his escape from a European war zone.
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![New York City 2
[unfinished, formerly New York City III], Piet Mondrian (Dutch, Amersfoort 1872–1944 New York), Oil and tape on canvas](/Rodan/dist/svg/rolling-0.9s-30px.svg)
