PAINTINGS CAUTIONARY PREENINGS

By: Anila

When the cultural historian and Piet Mondrian biographer Leaon Hanssen visited the Bozar Centre for the Arts in Brussels in the spring of 2016-

A painting stopped him dead in his tracks.

It looked remarkably similar to an untitled 1923 Mondrian that the Nazis had displayed as an example of ''degeneration art'' in a famous 1937 Munich exhibition.

It was thought to have been destroyed in the Berlin Air Raids at the end of World war II. But could this be it?

Without any information about its history, the painting, which is owned by a Swiss collector, had been included in a show that devoted to Mondrian's contemporary, the Dutch artist : Theo van Doesburg.

Mr. Hanssen asked to have closer look.

Professor Hanssen teaches at the Tilburg School of Humanities in the Netherlands.