Bart Van Der Leck (1876-1958)

Formerly in the personal collection of Hélène Kröller-Müller, the present lot is an important work dating from the artist's formative abstraction period. Painted the year van der Leck first met Piet Mondrian, Composite no. 3 belongs to a series of four abstract panels completed in the second half of 1916 and the last of his last works on eternit. Initially influenced by the work of Antoon Derikinderen and the Dutch Impressionists, upon meeting Mondrian in Laren in 1916, Van der Leck turned towards abstraction and began to paint compositions of geometrical shapes and primary colours.

Working closely with Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, Van der Leck co-founded the periodical De Stijl in 1917 and claimed to be the father of the avant-garde movement. In his own words he said: 'Mondrian came to my place one day with Doesburg, whom I had never seen before. When Doesburg noticed an abstract painting right on the easel, he exlaimed: "If that is to be the painting of the future, may I be hanged right now!" Well, a few months later, he was painting in precisely that manner...' (quoted in C. Michael, Piet Mondrian, New York, 1971, p. 138.).

Several studies of the Compositie series in the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller show the representational basis for the series. In these works harvesters are recognized as the figurative starting point for Compositie no. 3; on the left a kneeling woman is picking corn, to the centre one can distinguish a mower and on the right a standing woman drinking water from her cup, her head bent backwards, while the four blue rectangles along the upper edge represent the tops of the corn sheaves resting in the field.