Mondrian painting has been hanging upside down for 75 years - The Guardian

A coating by abstract Dutch creator Piet Mondrian has been hanging upside down successful assorted museums since it was archetypal enactment connected show 75 years ago, an creation historiographer has found, but warned it could disintegrate if it was hung the close broadside up now.

The 1941 picture, a analyzable interlacing lattice of red, yellow, achromatic and bluish adhesive tapes titled New York City I, was archetypal enactment connected show astatine New York’s MoMA successful 1945 but has hung at the creation postulation of the German national authorities of North Rhine-Westphalia successful Düsseldorf since 1980.

The mode the representation is presently hung shows the multicoloured lines thickening astatine the bottom, suggesting an highly simplified mentation of a skyline. However, erstwhile curator Susanne Meyer-Büser started researching the museum’s caller amusement connected the Dutch avant garde creator earlier this year, she realised the representation should beryllium the different mode around.

“The thickening of the grid should beryllium astatine the top, similar a acheronian sky,” said Meyer-Büser. “Once I pointed it retired to the different curators, we realised it was precise obvious. I americium 100% definite the representation is the incorrect mode around.”

The enactment does not carnivore Mondrian’s signature, perchance due to the fact that helium hadn’t deemed it finished. Photograph: Henning Kaiser/DDP/AFP/Getty Images

Indicators suggesting an incorrect hanging are multifold. The likewise named and same-sized lipid painting, New York City, which is on show successful Paris astatine the Centre Pompidou, has the thickening of lines astatine the top.

A photograph of Mondrian’s studio, taken a fewer days aft the artist’s decease and published successful American manner mag Town and Country successful June 1944, besides shows the aforesaid representation sitting connected an easel the different mode up.

Meyer-Büser said it was apt that Mondrian worked by starting his intricate layering with a enactment close astatine the apical of the framework and past worked his mode down, which would besides explicate wherefore immoderate of the yellowish lines halt a fewer millimetres abbreviated of the bottommost edge.

“Was it a mistake erstwhile idiosyncratic removed the enactment from its box? Was idiosyncratic being sloppy erstwhile the enactment was successful transit?”, the curator said. “It’s intolerable to say.”

Part of the occupation is that dissimilar astir of Mondrian’s earlier works, New York City I does not carnivore the artist’s signature, perchance due to the fact that helium hadn’t deemed it finished.

In spite of each the grounds pointing to the enactment being presently displayed upside down, the enactment volition beryllium shown the mode it has hung for 75 years successful the caller Mondrian. Evolution amusement that opens successful Düsseldorf connected Saturday.