This painting may be interpreted as an anti-Cubist demonstration of how figures may be linked by means of muscular arabesques and intense color contrasts with the abstracted ground, in contrast to Cubism¡¯s evolving device of binding together figures and objects through arbitrary overlaps and planar deformations in an illusionistic space. Matisse here poses a major aesthetic problem-the relation of the design to the image-in a way that he had never done before with such emphasis. This forceful tension between the image and the design is complemented by the stark contrast of positive figural solid and negative spatial void. Given that at this moment the pioneer Cubist, Picasso and Braque, were developing a style that blurred when it did not disrupt the familiar boundaries between solid and void, Matisse¡¯s style here emerges as strikingly ant-Cubist. .

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    "Mondrian was invited to participate in the spring 1925 Onafhankelijken exhibition. This obviously pleased him, and he wrote to Oud on 22 April 1925: "I now have a fine piece ready that will probably be shown at the Onafhankelijken in Amsterdam. They invited me to participate, without payment, together with a few Frenchmen. I will be curious to know what you think of it." By 2 June, Mondrian had received bad news, and sent a postcard to Oud: "I hope you haven't yet gone to Amsterdam to see my painting. I heard that they dropped a crate on it so that it couldn't be shown. Nothing has upset me as much as this for a very long time. I have recovered from it now. Disastrous, isn't it? My very best work." In a letter to Slijper written two days later, he again describes the painting as "my very best work." By 24 March 1926, Mondrian had entirely restored the canvas, and wrote to Slilper: "The damaged canvas from last year is now lined and repainted, so that it is now even better than before; I have sent it to Rotterdam, where Cabos can probably place it for me."... "In eight years of work, from 1925 to 1932, Mondrian produces eighty-two paintings, averaging ten a year. This production is roughly continuous: there are changes in rhythm and a noticeable slowdown after the outpouring of 1927, but no prolonged gaps, no serious crises. "The years 1925 to 1927 are almost entirely devoted to squarish variations of the open type prefigured by the 1922 Composition with Blue, Red, Yellow, and Black. In 1927, Mondrian returns to the compositional possibilities offered by this type when set in a vertical format. "The inscribed square of Hoek's peripheral type also reappears, first as a kind of displacement of the open rectangle toward the inside (thus becoming closed), yielding the discreet effect of a cruciform superimposition - that of a large horizontal band upon a less well-defined, vertical band. (This effect is first found in the diamond picture of 1925, formerly in the Cabos collection, unique at the time for its dynamic tension.) Mondrian soon abandons this superimposition effect, which will return in force with the canvases of the late 1930s."

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      Gogh, Vincent Willem van (1853-1890), Dutch postimpressionist painter, whose work represents the archetype of expressionism, the idea of emotional spontaneity in painting. Van Gogh was born March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, son of a Dutch Protestant pastor. Early in life he displayed a moody, restless temperament that was to thwart his every pursuit. By the age of 27 he had been in turn a salesman in an art gallery, a French tutor, a theological student, and an evangelist among the miners at Wasmes in Belgium. His experiences as a preacher are reflected in his first paintings of peasants and potato diggers; of these early works, the best known is the rough, earthy Potato Eaters (1885, Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam). Dark and somber, sometimes crude, these early works evidence van Gogh's intense desire to express the misery and poverty of humanity as he saw it among the miners in Belgium. These unusual combinations of two genres-still life and the interior view-were executed at the beginning of November. He had bought the furniture for his maison dartiste with the idea that it should reflect the personality of the occupant. In mid-January Van Gogh retouched the painting of his own chair, as we know form a letter to Theo. The piece was presumably never completed.

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    Cezanne painted a model called Michelangelo Di Rosa. Comparted with other portraits done in the same period, these four different poses make a real and spontaneous impression. Yet they too are the product of thorough compositional calculation which sues observation of the subject for deeper, symbolic ends. The picutre in the Mellon Collection shows the boy standing (Titil: Man Standing, Hands on Hips, 1885-1887), his right hand on his hip, the other at his side. His tranquil, contemplative pose is well captured in sonorous colors that spread from the colorful centre, the red waistcoat. The young lad sits with his head resting on one hand. Cezanne may have seen this pose in reproductions after examples such as Durer¡¯s Melancholia I, Michelangelo¡¯s depiction of the damned in the Sistine ceiling, and Carpeaux¡¯s Ugolino and his Sons. Cezanne had previously used this pose in the Temptation of St. Anthony. As usual, Cezanne distorts, making the left arm overly long.

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