Although named after a bustling square in Paris, Place de la Concorde is removed from any sense of naturalistic representation. Rather, it is characteristic of the geometric abstracted style developed by Mondrian and others around 1917. Neoplasticism, as it was called, sought to reduce art to its most basic components—white ground, black grid, primary colors—to express something spiritual or sublime. Mondrian brought this painting with him when he fled Paris in 1938 and settled in New York City a few years later. Responding to the dynamism of the modern American city, he altered the painting, scraping away paint, widening lines, and adding bars of color. He said the blocks of color he added gave the work “more boogie woogie.”