While everything changes through continuous imbalances between horizontals and verticals, a square expresses in the center a more stable to lasting equibrium between the opposite directions. The horizontal-vertical duality, from which all multiplicity is born, is transformed into unity when the opposite directions are equivalent, and this happens completely only in that central square. All the multiplicity that arises from continuous imbalances between horizontal and vertical is expressed in synthesis in the square proportion.

Elsewhere we see analogous attempts towards square proportions that nevertheless do not reach the permanent condition of the square observed in the center.
We are thus confronted with an uncertain space, dense with unstable balances that in the central square reach a moment of stability and certainty and then begin to change again, assuming ever new and different configurations.

The painter can thus suggest the changing aspect of reality (all the different relationships between horizontals and verticals...) without however neglecting an ideal synthesis and unity invoked by the human spirit in the face of the infinite variety of the world.

The composition expresses an ideal equilibrium (the square) and at the same time takes into account the unpredictable evolution of existence with its uncertain and never quite reached equilibrium, always poised between contrasting forces. Let's also think about our inner life always contended between opposite drives.

"In art it is important to distinguish two types of balance: 1) static balance 2) dynamic balance. It is always natural for human beings to seek static balance. This balance is obviously necessary for existence in time. But vitality, in the continuous succession in time, always destroys this balance. Abstract art is a concrete expression of this vitality." (Mondrian)

 

 


 

  

The central rectangle becomes two years later a square in a new composition where everything is now expressed through changing relationships between horizontal and vertical dashes. Each sign is different according to an ever new combination between the opposite directions. Each sign is different but they all share the same intimate nature and that is the perpendicular relationship. Even in the real world each living form is different from the others but they all share the same basic properties. "There is a design common to all things, plants, trees, animals, men, and it is with this design that one must be in consonance" (Henri Matisse). How to tune in to such a design if not by abstracting from the particular aspect of each single thing?
At this stage Mondrian lays the foundations of a plastic space that, instead of imitating the semblance of a few things, wants to suggest, albeit in abstract form, the totality of things. "Art must express the universal." Mondrian will say. Although all signs share the same fundamental relationship between horizontal and vertical, each sign expresses something different.
In abstract form, the composition evokes the multiplicity of things existing in the world without any longer lingering on the outward appearance of some of them that would necessarily exclude all the others. "As for details, the painter no longer has to worry about them. There is photography to render a hundred times better and more rapidly the multitude of details." (Matisse).