‘Up Side Down” Piet Mondrian's “New York City I,” 1941,
Straight lines in bright red, yellow, blue and black cut through a white canvas, forming a complex grid pattern that represents a skyline. This is one of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian’s famous abstract pieces, titled New York City I—and it may have been hanging upside down in museums since 1945, a year after the painter’s death.
The discovery began with Italian artist Francesco Visalli, who sent an email to a German museum, Kunstammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, last year: “Whenever I look at this work, I always have the distinct feeling that it needs to be rotated 180 degrees,” he wrote, per the New York Times’ Julia Jacobs. “I realize that for decades it has been observed and published with the same orientation, yet this feeling remains pressing.”
While many questions remain, we do have a few clues: A photo of the artist’s studio published in a 1944 issue of Town & Country shows the painting still on its easel, rotated 180 degrees from the way it has been hanging ever since. Mondrian considered the work incomplete and didn’t sign it, which meant that curators weren’t able to use a signature to orient the painting. And in another Mondrian painting— New York City, which is very similar to New York City I—the grid lines thicken at the top of the piece, rather than at the bottom.
Susanne Meyer-Büser thinks the thickening lines are meant to invoke nighttime above New York City. “The thickening of the grid should be at the top, like a dark sky,” she tells the Guardian. “Once I pointed it out to the other curators, we realized it was very obvious. I am 100 percent certain the picture is the wrong way around.”
Now, knowing what we do, will New York City I finally be flipped? Actually, curators are going to leave the artwork the way it is.
“The adhesive tapes are already extremely loose and hanging by a thread,” says Meyer-Büser. “If you were to turn it upside down now, gravity would pull it into another direction.”
Words: Molly Enking / Smithsonian Magazine
© Mondrian/Holtzman Trust, c/o Beeldrecht, Amsterdam, Holland, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, Düsseldorf / Walter Klein, Düsseldorf
