A painting by Dutch painter Piet Mondriann had been hanging the wrong way for 77 years

A funny scene occurred at the Kunstsammlung museum in Düsseldorf (Germany): an art historian discovered that a painting by painter Piet Mondriann had been hanging upside down for… 77 years!

Better late than never ! The Kunstsammlung museum in Düsseldorf (Germany) made a surprising discovery this week. Indeed, those in charge of the establishment realized that a picture by Dutch abstract painter Piet Mondriann hung upside down for 77 years.

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“The painting had no signature”

It was during a major retrospective honoring the painter, with the painting 'New York City 1' (made in 1941) as the centerpiece, that the blunder was pointed out.

« In a photo from 1944, I saw that the canvas was the other way around on an easel. It intrigued me “, said Saturday, October 29 in an interview with the German daily Southgerman newspaper Susanne Meyer-Büser, curator of the exhibition.

Therefore, a question on everyone's lips: how could such an error have occurred? According to the art historian, it is the Museum of Art Modern of New York (MoMA) who hung the work upside down in 1941.

Once exhibited at the Düsseldorf Museum in 1980, the canvas was arranged in the same way. Still according to the specialist, the error could come from the fact that “ the painting had no signature '. Its meaning has therefore been determined by “ the name of the artist written on the back of the frame by the administrator of the estate », Mondrian's Lords of Death, in 1944.

« If we were to flip her now, gravity would pull her in another direction. And this error is now part of the history of the work said Susanne Meyer-Büser.

You may not know it, but Piet Mondriann (1872-1944) was considered one of the pioneers of abstract painting.