Mondrian’s painting has been hanging upside down for 75 years | Piet Mondrian

Painting by the Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian It has been hung upside down in various museums since it was first shown 75 years ago, an art historian has found, but cautioned that it could disintegrate if hung from the right side up now.

The 1941 photograph, an intricate interlacing web of red, yellow, black, and blue duct tape titled First New York City, was first shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1945 but hung In the art collection of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Düsseldorf Since 1980.

The way the image is currently held shows the thickness of the multicolored lines at the bottom, suggesting a very simplified version of the horizon. However, when curator Susanne Meyer Bowser began researching the new museum display for the avant-garde Dutch artist earlier this year, she realized the image had to be the other way around.

“The thickness of the net should be at the top, like a dark sky,” Meyer Boozer said. “Once I explained it to the other curators, we realized it was very clear. I am 100% sure that the photo is wrong.”

Indications that indicate an incorrect comment are manifold. Oil painting of the same name and size, New York City, which is Exhibited in Paris at the Center Pompidouhas thicker lines on top.

A photo of Mondrian’s studio, taken a few days after the artist’s death and published in the American lifestyle magazine Town and Country in June 1944, shows the same photo sitting on an easel in the other direction.

Meyer-Büser said it’s possible that Mondrian worked by starting his intricate seams with a line right at the top of the tire and then working his way down, which also explains why some of the yellow streaks stop a few millimeters from the bottom rim.

“Was it wrong for someone to remove the work from their chest? Was someone dirty when work was on their way?” said the curator. “Impossible to say.”

Part of the problem is that unlike most of Mondrian’s previous work, New York City does not bear the artist’s signature, perhaps because he did not consider it finished.

Despite all the evidence that the work is currently shown upside down, the work will be shown the way it has been suspended for 75 years at New Mondrian. Evolution show starting in Dusseldorf on Saturday.