Monday 6 February 2012

Mondrian // Nicholson in Parallel - The Courtauld Gallery

Ben Nicholson, 1937 (painting), 1937
Mondrian // Nicholson in Parallel at The Courtauld Gallery examines the brief moment when London became an international centre of Modernism, in 1938. In that year Piet Mondrian, at the invitation of Ben Nicholson left war threatened Paris for London. Mondrian and Nicholson together formed a nucleus of avant-gardism in Hampstead (also present were Barbara Hepworth, Naum Gabo, Berthold Lubetkin, Ernő Goldfinger, Ernst Gombrich and Sigmund Freud). 
At the outbreak of war, in 1939, Nicholson and Hepworth left London for St Ives; they invited Mondrian to join them, but the countryside hating Mondrian declined and subsequently made his way to New York.
Read a fascinating account of this moment by Frances Spalding as well as in The Courtauld Gallery press release.
The exhibition continues until 20 May.
Piet Mondrian, Composition No.III White-Yellow, 1935-42
Piet Mondrian, Composition with Double Line and Yellow, 1932
Ben Nicholson, 1936 (white relief), 1936
Ben Nicholson, 1940-43 (two forms), 1940-43

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