The famous painting is on display in Dusseldorf Museum which has housed it since 1980. It was built in 1941 with red, yellow, and blue horizontal and vertical strips of tape arranged vertically to depict a stylized version of the New York City skyline.
“In contrast to Mondrian’s Almost Twins oil painting, exhibited at the Center Pompidou in Paris, the tape picture was rotated 180 degrees shortly after the artist’s death in 1944,” explains Meyer-Büser. But the advice now is not to flip it back to its original position as it could unravel.
Among the hypotheses for which the painting would have been hung incorrectly would be that identified by Meyer-Büser: in a photograph of the work taken in Mondrian’s studio a few days after his death and then published in Town and Country Magazine, you see how the canvas rests on an easel and is exposed in reverse, as it has now been positioned. But there is another clue, in a similar oil painting by Mondrian, also dedicated to the city of New York, the lines appear denser in the upper part of the picture. While the one exhibited in Düsseldorf has a greater concentration of color bands in the lower part. Therefore, according to the curator, it would make sense for the lines to thicken at the top, like a “dark sky”.
“Was it the fault of someone who took the work out of its packaging? Did someone transport it carelessly? It’s impossible to tell.”