One subject the money manager is happy to talk about is art. His passion is on display throughout DoubleLine’s offices, with many of the paintings from his personal collection hanging on the walls.
In designing DoubleLine’s logo, Gundlach borrowed from Mondrian, the abstract Dutch artist whose career spanned almost five decades until his death in 1944. His works are characterized by grids of black lines, white space and rectangles in primary colors.
Gundlach began buying valuable art in the 1990s, favoring what he calls pretty pictures of landscapes. In 2002, he went to the Tate Modern in London and wandered into a room where he saw a Mondrian and had an aha moment. It was the first abstract work that he truly appreciated.
“I got it,” he says, snapping his fingers. “I was like, ‘I really like this thing.’”
Gundlach’s Painting
Gundlach says he likes how Mondrian’s paintings express balance without symmetry and achieve the elimination of figure and ground.
“They seem to exist at the scale of a galaxy,” Gundlach says. “Mondrian is able to capture the infinite and the finite.”
Today, visitors stepping off the 18th-floor elevator at Gundlach’s offices are greeted by a painting inspired by Mondrian that the money manager himself created. It features double black lines on a white background with a blue rectangle.
“My problem is, I’m too much of a perfectionist,” Gundlach says of the Mondrian-inspired pieces he’s made. “Mine are more perfect than the real ones.”
For all his braggadocio, Gundlach has a strain of humility, especially when it comes to his employees, corporate bond manager Baha says. In its early days, DoubleLine’s existence was threatened, as the TCW lawsuit and its potential liabilities scared away institutional investors, she says.