by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 14, 2023
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Victory Boogie Woogie brought the career of Piet Mondrian to an end, remaining unfinished.
This artwork came shortly after Broadway Boogie Woogie and followed a similar intensity of colour and shape. Mondrian, having moved to the US to avoid the conflicts of WWII, sort to continue the development of his abstract style which had replaced earlier landscape painting several decades earlier. Simplistic work like Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue was now superceded by inspirational, much busier pieces. This painting is now owned by the Dutch state, from where the artist was born.
Whilst Victory Boogie Woogie was left unfinished, there have still been much discussion over the intentions of the artist in this painting. There is clearly less linearity to be found here, perhaps reflecting how Mondrian's view of New York City had changed from when he first arrived in 1940. Whilst Broadway Boogie Woogie has a lighter balance in capturing the bird's eye view of the city, this follow up is similar but clearly more manic in form. Victory here represented victory over tyranny, clearly symbolic at this time. Perhaps the vibrant life of New York would overcome, eventually, the dangers posed by enemy forces in WWII. Both the war and the painting were unfinished at that time.