''Victory Boogie Woogie'' is the last, unfinished work of the Dutch abstract painter

Piet Mondrian Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (; 7 March 1872 – 1 February 1944), known after 1911 as Piet Mondrian (, , ), was a Dutch Painting, painter and Theory of art, art theoretician who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He w ...

, left incomplete when Mondrian died in New York in 1944. He was still working on it three days before dying. Since 1998 it has been in the collection of the Kunstmuseum, in

The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...

. It has been said that "Mondrian's life and his affection for music are mirrored in the painting nd that it isa testimony of the influence which New York had on Mondrian."

Purchase for Kunstmuseum, The Hague

It was purchased at a cost of 80 million Dutch guilders (approximately 35 million euros, US$40 million) from the American collector Samuel Irving Newhouse, who previously had bought it the from Emily and Burton Tremaine for US$12 million in the mid 1980s. It was bought in 1997 by the Stichting Nationaal Fonds Kunstbezit (National Art Foundation) through a gift from the

Dutch Central Bank De Nederlandsche Bank (, , abbr. DNB) is the national central bank for the Netherlands within the Eurosystem. It was the Dutch central bank from 1814 to 1998, issuing the guilder. Since 2014, it has also been the country's national competent auth ...

, commemorating the introduction of the

euro The euro (currency symbol, symbol: euro sign, €; ISO 4217, currency code: EUR) is the official currency of 20 of the Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the ...

, at the time the most expensive purchase ever for a Dutch museum. The amount of money raised questions in the Dutch

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...

, and also from other museums. In 2014, U.S. President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

was photographed with ''Victory Boogie Woogie'', in the company of some Dutch politicians.

References

External links

An Explanation of ''Victory Boogie Woogie'' by Artist Michael Sciam
New York Times (2014) {{DEFAULTSORT:Victory Boogie Woogie De Stijl 1944 paintings Paintings by Piet Mondrian Unfinished paintings Collection of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag