
Piet Mondrian, 'Composition with Yellow, Red, Black, Blue and Gray,' 1920
This meticulously crafted miniature painting is Richard Pettibone's faithful reproduction of Piet Mondrian's iconic 1920 geometric abstraction, rendered in oil on canvas at a dramatically reduced scale. The work features Mondrian's signature grid-based composition of black lines dividing fields of primary colors — yellow, red, and blue — alongside black and gray, embodying the De Stijl principles of pure abstraction and universal harmony. Presented in the artist's own handmade frame, Pettibone's appropriation pays homage to modernist masterworks while simultaneously questioning notions of originality, authorship, and the value placed on scale in art.
- Medium
- oil on canvas, in artist's frame
- Location
- Phillips, Salt Lake City, UT
- Spotted At
- Auction House · PhillipsView on map
🔨 Auction Lot
Contemporary Art Day Sale
May 15, 2015
More by Richard Pettibone
Artists in conversation

Sherrie Levine
American · b. 1947

Levine is a foundational appropriation artist who directly rephotographed and reproduced canonical modernist works, engaging in the same postmodern dialogue about authorship and originality that defines Pettibone's miniature reproduction of Mondrian. Both artists challenge the uniqueness of the art object by meticulously replicating revered masterworks.

Mike Bidlo
American · b. 1953

Bidlo creates painstakingly hand painted reproductions of iconic works by artists like Picasso and Leger, sharing Pettibone's practice of faithful manual replication as a conceptual and postmodern artistic strategy. His work similarly interrogates ideas of originality, homage, and the status of canonical modernist paintings.

Elaine Sturtevant
American · b. 1924

Sturtevant was a pioneer of appropriation art who hand reproduced works by major artists including Warhol and Duchamp, directly paralleling Pettibone's practice of recreating iconic modernist compositions to interrogate authorship and originality. Her work shares the same conceptual framework of the faithful yet transformative copy as artwork.

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