S triking in palette and captivating in composition, She and Mondrian (2003) is a quintessential and defining Liu Ye painting from the artist’s Golden Era – without question amongst the best of his prolific and accomplished practice. The painting features a plenitude of some of the most iconic visual traits and motifs that Liu Ye is celebrated for: the mysterious young girls, a recurring character in Liu Ye’s oeuvre; a work by the Dutch master Piet Mondrian placed within the composition; and finally the strong compositional framework which has come to define the artist’s most celebrated compositions. Painted in 2003, She and Mondrian belongs to a series of two works featuring the artist’s signature pictorial ode to the Dutch master Piet Mondrian, and a desk behind which sits the figure of a young child. An important source of inspiration to Liu Ye, the blue and yellow work inspired by Mondrian which spreads out across the long desk can be seen throughout the artist’s work, including the equally spellbinding Mondrian in the Morning (2000) which may have remained in the artist’s own private collects ion to this day. Housed as part of important international collects ions, She and Mondrian was, significantly, featured at Schoeni Art Gallery in Beijing and Hong Kong in 2003 and 2004. Combining in equal parts Western and Chinese influences, and striking a sublime balance between figure, foreground and background, She and Mondrian manifests the consummately unique surrealist whimsicality that so powerfully defines Liu Ye’s oeuvre.

Ranking among Liu Ye's most important and enduring motifs, works by Mondrian have featured in the artist’s compositions since the early 1990s. Here, the powerful lines and strong, structural quality of Mondrian’s blue and yellow compositions are rendered on the hazy yellow desk, the boundary between compositions blurring. The young girl sits with coloured pencils, implying the significance of Mondrian as a source of inspiration for the artist. Echoing the aesthetics of Mondrian, Liu Ye’s commitment to pure planes of colour is in full display, the yellow imparting a warm glow against the rich blue of the background. To Liu Ye, Mondrian “elevates art to a new level. Even though he advocated rationalism, to me, his paintings were very sensuous and spiritual” (Liu Ye, quoted in “Liu Ye in Conversation with Philip Tinari” in Christoph Noe, Ed., Liu Ye: Catalogue Raisonné 1991-2015, Ostfildern 2015, p. 50). Enamoured by Mondrian, and in choosing a large scale canvas which he almost rarely uses for the present work, Liu emphasises the significance of this painting.

Carefully orchestrated to Mondrian’s aesthetic, the strong verticals of Liu Ye’s homage are offset by the horizontal of the desk, the powerful lines of blue and yellow mincing the structural qualities of the Dutch painter. This flatly painted expanse of the blue background heralds what the critic Zhu Zhu describes as the artist’s Golden Era of painting; "This simplified handling of background lies somewhere between Mondrian's abstraction and the spatial composition of traditional Chinese painting" (Zhu Zhu, 'An Aged Childhood', in Liu Ye, Bern 2007, p. 72). Constructed within a simple two dimensional composition, a strong contrast between the serenity of the blue and vibrant yellow bring upon an intense stimuli, one that is reminiscent of the visual effects brought along by Mark Rothko's pure-colour abstract paintings.

First encountering the Dutch painter in 1980 while a student of industrial design at Beijing Industrial Art School, Liu had the opportunity of seeing many of Mondrian’s works first-hand in his prolonged period spent studying in Europe – first in Berlin in 1994 and later in Amsterdam in 1998. Liu would repeatedly quote the paintings of Mondrian, placing them within his own canvases to achieve a painting within a painting effect, transplanting their orderly tranquillity into his representational treatments as a visible cross-temporal model and artistic frame of reference for his own work, eventually internalising Mondrian as part of his creative self. By 2007, quotations of Mondrian had practically disappeared from Liu’s compositions, making the present work an incredibly sought-after piece by the artist.

Simple and inward looking, the picture plane of She and Mondrian focuses on Liu Ye’s signature little girl and the Mondrian. It was in the 2000s that Liu began to increasingly use female figures as his subjects, with a little girl dressed in student clothing placed in the centre of the present work. It was during the artist’s Golden Era that female figures—women, little girls, mermaids, ballerinas, students, cloaked travellers—became the primary subject of his works, moving away from the male characters that dominated his early works from the 1990s, such as his iconic little sailor boys (Zhu Zhu, “Only One Gram”, in Christoph Noe, ed., Liu Ye: Catalogue Raisonné 1991-2015, Ostfildern, 2015, p. 27). With her large head, dark, wide eyes and diminutive frame, the solitary figure of the present work appears to blush a deep shade of rouge, gazing out at the viewer with bashful eyes from under locks of jet-black hair.

As with many works by Liu Ye, She and Mondrian displays an irresolvable tension between an imagined and fantastical narrative, and the representation of allegorical objects consciously chosen by the artist, arranged in a compositional rigour that comprises of the artis’s transparent layers of soft colours found in his later works. As Bernhard Fibicher says, "In his work Liu Ye strives to combine the imagination and sensibility of the fairytale with the strictly rational thinking of philosophy, to obtain a synthesis of eastern art (in his paintings we can trace Chinese but also Japanese influences) and western role models (Mondrian, Barnett Newmann etc.) in strict and at the same t.mes playful visual findings" (Bernhard Fibicher, 'The Squaring of the Fairytale' in Ibid, p. 13).

《小 女孩與蒙德里安》色彩矚目，構圖迷人，是劉野在其藝術生涯的黃金時期所創作的經典油畫，亦無疑是他眾多成功作品的典範之一。這幅畫充分體現了劉野最具標誌性的視覺特徵和主題：神秘的小女孩——這是在他的作品反覆出現的角色。構圖中亦放置了荷蘭大師皮耶・蒙德里安（Piet Mondrian）的作品。除此之外，還有定義劉野傑出作品的鮮明構圖框架。《小女孩與蒙德里安》創作於 2003 年，是兩幅系列作品中的其中一幅。這兩幅作品極具代表性，是劉野對皮耶・蒙德里安的繪畫頌歌，畫中有一張桌子，桌後坐著一個孩童。蒙德里安是劉野的重要靈感來源，畫中可見，他在長桌上畫了對他啟發深遠的蒙德里安藍黃畫作；而另一幅同樣引人入勝的《清晨的蒙德里安》（2000），可能至今仍由劉野私人收藏。《小女孩與蒙德里安》是重要的國際收藏，2003 年和 2004 年分別於北京和香港的香港少勵畫廊展出。該畫結合了中西藝術元素，在人物、前景和背景之間取得妙絕平衡，表現出極其獨特的超現實詼諧，是定義劉野作品的關鍵元素。

蒙德里安的畫作自 1990 年代初就一直反覆出現於劉野的作品中，是藝術家最重要且長久的主題之一。畫中，朦朧黃色桌子上的蒙德里安構圖，呈現了有力的線條和鮮明的結構，令畫與畫之間的界限變得模糊。小女孩拿著彩色鉛筆，安坐桌前，暗示著蒙德里安作為劉野的重要靈感來源。他使用純粹的色彩平面，彰顯與蒙德里安呼應的美學品味。在鮮艷的藍色背景下，黃色帶來了一道溫暖的光芒。對劉野而言：「蒙德里安將藝術提升到新的層次。儘管他推崇理性主義，但在我看來，他的畫充滿著感性與靈性。」（劉野，摘自〈劉野與田霏宇對談〉，Christoph Noe ，《劉野作品集 1991-2015》，Ostfildern，2015，頁 50）他深受蒙德里安的作品所吸引，所以罕有地選擇使用大尺寸畫布創作，以強調這幅畫的重大意義。

劉野精心安排，以構圖致敬蒙德里安的美學。桌子的水平感抵消了畫面強烈的垂直感，藍、黃的鮮明線條展現了這位荷蘭畫家作品的結構特質。平坦的藍色背景，昭示著評論家朱朱所形容為，劉野繪畫的黃金時代：「他對背景的簡化處理，介乎蒙德里安的抽象，與中國傳統繪畫的空間構成。」（朱朱，摘自〈老去童年〉，《劉野》，Bern，2007，頁 72）。簡單的二維構圖中，寧靜的藍色和活躍的黃色之間形成強烈對比與刺激，令人想起馬克・羅斯科（Mark Rothko）純色抽象畫的視覺效果。

1980 年，劉野在北京工業藝術學校修讀工業設計時，第一次接觸這位荷蘭畫家之作。之後他長年在歐洲學習，1994 年前往柏林，1998 年來到阿姆斯特丹，期間有機會親眼目睹許多蒙德里安的作品。劉野在自己的畫中反覆引用蒙德里安的畫作，營造出「畫中畫」效果，將其中的秩序、寧靜移植到他的具象處理，作為作品可見的跨時間模型與藝術參考框架，最終將蒙德里安內化為他自身創意的一部分。到了 2007 年，劉野幾乎不再引用蒙德里安的作品，本作因此成為炙手可熱的收藏品。

《小女孩與蒙德里安》畫面簡單內省，劉野標誌性的小女孩與蒙德里安成為了畫中焦點。2000 年代，劉野越來越多以女性形像為創作主題，他將身穿校服的小女孩放在本作的中心位置。在劉野的黃金年代，女性形象——女人、小女孩、美人魚、芭蕾舞者、學生、披著斗篷的旅人——成為了其作品的主要題材。他棄用了自 90 年代佔據其早期作品的男性角色，例如頗具代表性的小水手男孩。（[HT1] 朱朱，摘自〈只有一克〉，Christoph Noe ，《劉野作品集 1991-2015》，Ostfildern，2015，頁 27）畫中的女孩有著大大的頭、漆黑闊大的眼睛與嬌小的體格，孤獨的身影似乎泛著深紅，在烏黑的髮絲下，用害羞的眼神凝視著觀者。

就如劉野的許多其他作品一樣，《小女孩與蒙德里安》在想像與幻想式的敘事，以及他有意識地選擇的寓言物表現之間，呈現出一種無法解決的張力。他在後期作品採用了透明的柔和色層，並用這些寓言物打造嚴謹的構圖。正如伯恩哈德‧費比徹（Bernhard Fibicher）所言：「在他的作品中，劉野試圖將童話的想像與感性，結合哲學的嚴謹理性思維，以讓東方藝術語言（在他的畫作中可見中國和日本文化的影響）與西方藝術翹楚（蒙德里安、巴尼特·紐曼等）雙劍合璧，從而成就嚴謹又調皮的視覺效果。」（引自〈井然有序的童話故事〉，同上，頁 13）。