[2] In 1917, Mondrian was one of the founding members of the Dutch art group De Stijl ("The Style"), an abstract movement which sought unification of material and spiritual worlds through pure geometry.

The Dutch art historian Carel Blotkamp hypothesizes that this painting is one of Mondrian's first to use a modular or grid-like system.

[3] Later X-ray photography corroborates this, revealing that Mondrian sketched an underlying grid pattern of uniform rectangles based on the golden ratio.

[3] Thus, the painting's visible rectangles are superimposed on the underlying grid, giving what the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, describes as "an exceptional harmony of proportion".

[2] The painting was on display in an exhibition organized by the Hollandsche Kunstenaarskring ("Dutch Artists' Circle") in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam[6] in 1919.