The Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City announces the acquisition of an early work by Piet Mondrian to be added to the Bloch collection when it goes on view in 2017. The work was purchased from a collection in a private sale through Christie’s with an acquisitions fund from the museum:
Stammer Mill with Streaked Sky, 1905-1907, is an early landscape by Mondrian that represents both an extension of the Dutch landscape tradition in the 17th century and a significant turning point for the artist into abstraction, as evidenced by the windmill blades and horizontally banded sky. The work will debut at the museum in March 2017, at the opening of the currently under construction Bloch Galleries in the museum’s original Beaux-Arts building. The renovation of the Bloch Galleries was made possible by a $12 million gift from Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation, and will house their collection of 29 masterworks of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Integrated into the museum’s collection, it bolsters their European holdings, and provides a fitting home for Stammer Miller with Streaked Sky, which paved the way for modernism.
