piet mondrian eu

1 - Composition in Oval, 1913

2 - Composition II, 1913

3 - Geinrust Farm (Compositional Study), 1906

4 - Geinrust Farm in the Mist, 1906-07

5 - Pointillist Study of a Dune, 1909

6 - Seascape, 1909

7 - Thre Red Tree (Evening), 1908-10

8 - Flowering Trees, 1912

9 - Composition in Oval, 1913

10 - Composition II, 1913

In the course of 1913 an absolute unity imposed from the outside (the oval) is replaced by a relative synthesis which generates from inside the composition (2).

As we have seen, Mondrian had used an oval to express the natural landscape as a whole even before the Cubist phase (3).
In 4 the oval tends to dissolve while a black segment (the roof of a farmhouse) concentrates into a finite dimension the boundless extension of a river, that is to say, of nature. The black segment evokes a synthesis which generates from inside the composition.

An oval form reappears during the Expressionistic period (5).
The oval dissolves in 6, replaced by a yellow accent in the center which, analogously to the black segment of 4, suggests a moment of synthesis of the boundless and dynamic horizontal extension of the sea.

An internal synthesis is visible in the figure of a tree, where the trunk unites the multitude of the branches from within.
A Cubist rendering of trees (8) also display signs in the central area of the composition alluding to a circular reorganization of space, which tends to concentrate and to maintain coherence from the inside.

Since the beginning and during all the different phases of his activity (Naturalism, Expressionism, Cubism) Mondrian has been intent on expressing a unity that generates itself from within the composition and is not, like the oval, applied from the outside.
This is why the central rectangle evoking an internal synthesis in 10 constitutes a progress during the Cubist phase.