Harvard's art community has a world-class collection of central European art, Pulitzer Professor of Modern Art Yves-Alain Bois, who is a scholar of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, and Harry Cooper '81-'82, the associate curator of modern art at the Fogg Museum and a Mondrian expert.

Thus, the University seems like a natural place to bestow a Mondrian, at least for the recent donors of "Composition with Blue, Black, Yellow and Red," which the artist painted in 1922.

"I got a call telling me that these private individuals had a Mondrian and were interested in placing it in a museum in the U.S. that didn't have a Mondrian and would make good use of it, that would take a careful and scholarly approach and not just put it in storage," said Cooper, who wrote his dissertation on Mondrian.

The Busch-Reisinger Museum, which is physically connected to the Fogg, purchased the painting from the owners for a reduced price. The painting's value is estimated at $4 million. It was purchased with funds from the friends of the Busch-Reisinger Museum and an additional anonymous donor.

The museum has a collection of 1920s central European abstraction, including works by Paul Klee, El Lissitzy and Wassily Kandinsky.

"Given Mondrian's ties to El Lissitzy as well as artists of the Bauhaus, [the painting] will greatly complement our holdings in this area and provide new areas of study and research," said Peter Nisbet, Daimler-Benz curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum.

The painting, from the beginning of Mondrian's mature period, was familiar to Bois and Angelica Zander Rudenstine, wife of University President Neil L. Rudenstine. Angelica Rudenstine first viewed it when they were scouting out paintings for a 1995 Mondrian retrospective.

The original owners, who wish to remain anonymous, agreed to loan the painting to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. for this retrospective. The retrospective, minus "Composition with Blue, Black Yellow and Red," also appeared in New York and The Hague.