Hardly anyone would assume that the "composition with dissonance" is actually a portrait portrait. But it has evidently emerged from a portrait photography in a constant process of abstraction and was conceived as a portrait of a woman. Eight studies made Theo van Doesburg, until the oil painting in the dissonant color pairs in red-orange and blue-green 1919 was finished. "I also worked on this portrait of a woman," van Doesburg wrote in 1919 to the poet Antony Kok, to whom he explained how difficult it was to achieve a harmonious result. "After 8 studies, I came to a satisfactory result." "Composition in dissonance" is the final point of a group of works that emerged from the photo portrait of the daughter of the director of a canning factory in Leiden. In the background of the room photographed with the person being portrayed, an abstract image can be seen, which gradually becomes the center of the image and has been developed into an abstract painting with 16 screened modules in primary colors. In 1946, the painting was acquired by Marguerite Hagenbach, later wife of Hans Arp, by Nelly van Doesburg, the artist's widow. Hagenbach donated it to the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1968, where it is exhibited today.

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Composition in Dissonances by Theo van Doesburg. Available as an art print on canvas, photo paper, watercolor board, uncoated paper or Japanese paper.
painting · dutch · abstract · abstraction · de stijl · constructivist · constructivism · neoplasticism · neoplastic · colour · squares · squared · coloured · colored · rectangles · rectangular · Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland / Bridgeman Images