Piet Mondrian photographed by John Cecil Stephenson in Hampstead, c 1940Image 1 of 5 | Estate of John Cecil Stephenson/Tate Archive

Ben Nicholson his Hampstead studio, 1935, photo by Humphrey SpenderImage 2 of 5 | National Portrait Gallery, London

Ben Nicholson, 1936 (White Relief), 1936, private collectionImage 3 of 5 | The Estate of Ben Nicholson. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2011

Piet Mondrian, Composition C (no III) with Red, Yellow and Blue, C 1935Image 4 of 5 | © 2012 Mondrian/Holtzman Trust c/o HCR International, Washington DC

Ben Nicholson, 1940-43 (Two Forms), 1940-43, National Museum CardiffImage 5 of 5 | Estate of Ben Nicholson. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2011

 

 

 

 

 

Overview

This exhibition charts the careers of Ben Nicholson and Piet Mondrian. The former, a pioneer of abstract art in Britain, was profoundly influenced by a visit to the latter’s Paris studio in 1934. Nicholson described the scene a decade later to art historian John Summerson: ‘I remember after this first visit sitting at a café table on the edge of a pavement almost touching all the traffic going into and out of the Gare Montparnasse, & sitting there for a very long time with an astonishing feeling of quiet and repose (!) – the thing I remember most was the feeling of light in his room & the pauses and silences.'

Follow the careers of both artists and track the ultimate fate of abstract art in Britain in this major show, which brings together paintings and reliefs by both artists.

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In 1936, Nicholson made 1936 (white relief), described by Charles Darwent in Art Quarterly magazine as ‘the absolute rejection of everything Nicholson, and most other English painters of his generation, had stood for earlier … Nicholson’s Reliefs did away with individualism in favour of communalism, that perfect, Neo-Plastic world which Mondrian had preached.’