Drydock at Durgerdam

**Conservation of this watercolor was made possible by a generous contribution from Dena and Al Naylor.** Before the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian committed himself to avant-garde abstraction in the late 1910s, and became a leading proponent of nonobjective Neo-plasticism, he was an accomplished landscape painter. This watercolor, executed in his mid-20s, represents a shipyard at Durgerdam, a coastal village seven kilometers east of Amsterdam, and shows boats of various shapes and sizes, including, in the foreground, a sailboat dry-docked for repair. It is a colorful scene, and Mondrian’s interest in geometry seems apparent in his emphasis on line, mostly diagonal and highlighted throughout in white, of the buildings, fences, and boat masts. He depicted this dry-docked sailboat at Durgerdam in at least two other works on paper; the Minneapolis version is the largest and most finished of the three.