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©
Vordemberge-Gildewart Foundation (Rapperswil/Switzerland)
Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart

Composition No. 104. White on White

1936
Oil on canvas.
60 x 60 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
778
(
1978.70
)
Room 43
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room

Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart came into contact with the De Stijl group towards the mid 1920s and, together with Van Doesburg, contributed to defining “Elementalism, ” the dynamic variant of Neo-Plasticism. He had previously had some connection with the Dadaists of Hanover through his friend Schwitters, and years later collaborated with the Paris abstract groups Cercle et Carré and Abstraction-Création.

Composition No. 104. White on White was painted in 1936, at a difficult time for the artist owing to the Nazi advance, which forced him to live in hiding in Amsterdam while Holland was occupied. His pictorial language had become increasingly refined and according to the sculptor Hans Arp, his subtle compositions, resembling triangular constellations of great purity, were the antithesis of the chaotic confusion all around him. The subtitle White on White, the artist’s original, refers to his renunciation of the use of colour in order to concentrate the full tension of the painting on the confrontation of the floating geometric forms. This emphasis on absence of colour, which recalls Malevich, is coupled with the incorporation of different textures into the various planes to introduce an element of coarseness that further adds to the dynamism of the image and gives it the appearance of a painted relief.

The work entered the Schröfer collection in The Hague, most likely as a result of the painter’s first exhibition in this city in 1938, which included the present painting. It then passed to Paul Citroen, the painter linked to De Stijl who founded the Nieuwe Kunstschool in Amsterdam. It entered the collection of Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza in 1978.

Paloma Alarcó

20th Century20th Century - European painting. Pioneers of abstractionPaintingOilcanvas
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German Expressionism from the Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection exhibition catalogue (Spanish with English booklet)

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Composition No. 104. White on White. Composición nº 104. Blanco sobre blanco, 1936
Composition No. 104. White on White
Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart

©

Vordemberge-Gildewart Foundation (Rapperswil/Switzerland)

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Composition No. 104. White on White. Composición nº 104. Blanco sobre blanco, 1936
Composition No. 104. White on White
Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart

©

Vordemberge-Gildewart Foundation (Rapperswil/Switzerland)

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