Simultaneous Counter Composition

Mystery Painting Description

by Billy and Caitlin

Mystery Painting

recreated by our Walter Hays partners

Our mystery painting has a very light gray background. The paper is a perfect square. On the right side of the paper there is a thick black vertical line 1/4 away from the edge. It goes from the top to bottom. About 1/9 from the bottom, there is a thick black horizontal line that goes from one side to the other. In the little rectangle where the two lines cross, it is red. There is another black line that forms a triangle with the edges of the upper left corner. It is separated into two not-quite-equal parts. The bottom part, which is smaller, is olive green. To make it, mix green, yellow, and olive. The upper part is the gray color of the sky on a foggy or cloudy day, and so is the horizontal bar on the bottom. The vertical bar is slightly darker in color.

Analysis
by Caitlin and Billy

Our oil-on-canvas mystery painting is called "Simultaneous Counter Composition." It was painted by Theo van Doesburg in 1929. It is 19 3/4 x 19 3/4 inches, and is currently in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Our partners were good at the shapes and making black lines. The painting was very recognizable.

We could have taken out the fractions and used a different way to describe where the lines were. That part wasn't very clear. We think they used fractions of an inch instead of fractions of the paper. This painting was hard to describe and our partners did a good job, even if the paintings weren't exactly the same.

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Purple Line

This site maintained by Lucinda Surber. Page finished 6/6/98.