An explanation of Mondrian's oeuvre by Michael Sciam

Broadway Boogie Woogie – 1st Part

A multitude of small gray, yellow, red, and blue fragments randomly moving along the lines:

Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43, Piet Mondrian
Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43,
Oil on Canvas, cm. 127 x 127

join up with others to generate symmetrical configurations (Diagram A):

Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43, Diagram, Piet Mondrian
Broadway Boogie Woogie Diagram A

which give birth to planes (Diagram B) where the relationship between horizontal and vertical appears more stable and durable than in the initial fragments moving along the lines:

Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43, Piet Mondrian
Broadway Boogie Woogie Diagram B

New planes are now made of two colors (Diagram C):

Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43, Piet Mondrian
Broadway Boogie Woogie Diagram C
Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43, Piet Mondrian
Broadway Boogie Woogie

Diagram D shows how the three primary colors concentrate now in the area of just two planes while to the right one plane finally synthesizes yellow, red and blue into a compact unity:

Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43, Piet Mondrian
Broadway Boogie Woogie Diagram D

The manifold space made of yellow, red and blue fragments expanding on lines toward opposite directions which disrupted our visual field at the beginning of the process by keeping the eye in constant motion, attain now a unitary synthesis (Diagram E):

Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43, Piet Mondrian
Broadway Boogie Woogie, Diagram E

Recapitulating diagrams A, B, C, D: A multitude of small gray, yellow, red, and blue fragments become monochromatic planes which transform into two-colored planes that then become a single plane constituting a synthesis of the three primary colors.

In Broadway Boogie Woogie space undergoes uninterrupted transformation from a condition of duality and multiplicity to one of unity.