According to the curator, you will never necessarily find out who has turned the board the wrong way.
– We know from the photographs that this work of art was first exhibited at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art in New York) in 1945, and it was already upside down then, says Meyer-Büser.
He became interested in the differences between the two different photographs and investigated the matter by turning the cardboard version of the picture upside down.
– I looked at the picture and it works really well when you turn it upside down. Suddenly it has more plasticity, more depth.
Suspicions were confirmed when the curator examined the adhesive tapes. From them, he concluded that the artist had made the work the other way around.
However, in the soon-to-be-opened Mondrian exhibition in Düsseldorf, the painting will not be turned over, as the velcro strips could come off and destroy the painting.
According to Meyer-Büser, we will probably never know how the work ended up the wrong way.