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TEACHERS’ RESOURCE MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL COVER IMAGE: Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937 Top: Piet Mondrian Composition C (No III) with Red, Yellow and Blue, 1935 Private collection, on loan to Tate © 2012 Mondrian/ Holtzman Trust c/o HCR International Washington DC Bottom: Ben Nicholson 1937 (painting) The Courtauld Gallery, London, Samuel Courtauld Trust © Angela Verren Taunt. All rights reserved DACS 2012 WELCOME I: MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL The Courtauld Institute of Art runs an exceptional programme of activities II: GOING MODERN AND BEING BRITISH suitable for young people, school teachers and members of the public, III: 1937 whatever their age or background. We offer resources which contribute IV: DIALOGUES AND COLLABORATIONS: to the understanding, knowledge and BEYOND THE SINGULAR ARTIST enjoyment of art history based upon the world-renowned art collection and the V: MONDRIAN AND THE FOURTH DIMENSION expertise of our students and scholars. I hope the material will prove to be both OF MODERN SCIENCE useful and inspiring. VI: LINES CROSSED: GRIDS AND RHYTHMS Henrietta Hine ON PAPER Head of Public Programmes VII: REGARDE!: MONDRIAN À PARIS (1911 – 1940) The Teachers’ Resources are intended for use by secondary schools and colleges VIII: GLOSSARY OF TERMS and by teachers of all subjects for their own research. The essays are written by early career academics from The Courtauld Institute of Art and we hope the material will give teachers and students from all backgrounds access to the academic expertise available at a world renowned college of the University of London. Each essay is marked with suggested links to subject areas and key stage levels. We hope teachers and educators will use these resources to plan lessons, organise visits to the gallery or gain further insight into the exhibitions at The Courtauld Gallery. Joff Whitten Gallery Education Programmer The Courtauld Institute of Art Cover Image: Front cover of J.L. Martin, Ben Nicholson and N. Gabo (eds) Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937, Faber and Faber. Copy belonging to Barbera Hepworth, courtesy of Bowness TEACHERS’ RESOURCE MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL Compiled and produced by Joff Whitten and Meghan Goodeve SUGGESTED CURRICULUM LINKS FOR EACH ESSAY ARE MARKED IN ORANGE. To book a visit to the gallery or to discuss any of the education projects at The Courtauld Gallery please contact: e: [email protected] t: 0207 848 1058 I: MONDRIAN || NICHOLSON: IN PARALLEL Left: Piet Mondrian in the garden of 6 The Mall, Hampstead c.1939-40 Photographer: John Cecil Stephenson Tate Archive, London Right: Ben Nicholson in his studio, 7 The Mall, Hampstead c.1935 Photographer: Humphrey Spender National Portrait Gallery, London MONDRIAN AND NICHOLSON PURSUED A REFINED FORM OF ABSTRACTION WITH A RESTRAINED VOCABULARY OF COLOURS AND GEOMETRIC FORMS, OFFERING AN ALTERNATIVE MODERN VISION FOR ART. This exhibition tells the remarkable story he found powerful confirmation of his In 1938, with war appearing imminent, of the creative relationship between Piet artistic convictions through the Dutchman’s Nicholson sent an invitation to Mondrian ”Mondrian, one of the most celebrated example. Over the following years enabling him to leave Paris for London. painters of the 20th century, and Ben Nicholson would produce some of his Once Mondrian arrived, he was Nicholson, one of this country’s greatest greatest works, including a major group of welcomed into an international community modern artists. It will show work from coloured abstracts and his famous series of avant-garde artists and writers living the decade of their friendship, which of pure white reliefs. He hand-carved these close by in Hampstead, including Henry culminated with Mondrian moving from reliefs from solid wooden panels, making Moore, Naum Gabo, Herbert Read, John Paris to London in 1938, at Nicholson’s planes of different depths to create shadow Cecil Stephenson and Nicholson’s future invitation, and the two working in lines of varying thicknesses. At the same wife, Barbara Hepworth. Nicholson found neighbouring studios in Parkhill Road, time, Mondrian was taking new directions him a studio-cum-bed-sitting-room at 60 Hampstead, when for a short period in his painting, making greater use of Parkhill Road, overlooking Nicholson’s London was an international centre of expanses of white space in combination studio. Mondrian immediately set modernist art. with small but intensive areas of vibrant about transforming the room, having it colour. He also renewed the possibilities whitewashed before adding patches of Nicholson first visited Mondrian in his Paris of his famous horizontal and vertical black colour, as he had in Paris: ‘his wonderful studio in the spring of 1934. Stepping into lines, sometimes bringing them together squares of primary colours climbed up the purity and calm of its white-painted as double lines, to enhance the dynamism the walls’, Hepworth remembered. He interior, from the hustle and bustle of the of his compositions. Mondrian opened up installed his few possessions, including street, was an extraordinary experience, new aesthetic possibilities that Nicholson his gramophone on which he played his Nicholson later recalled: made his own in highly original and beloved jazz records. Finally, he arranged imaginative ways, which the Dutchman his unfinished canvases, which he had His studio was an astonishing room, admired greatly. Nicholson, in turn, offered brought from Paris and set up a trestle he’d stuck up on the walls different sized Mondrian new artistic stimulation and table that Nicholson had given him to paint squares painted with primary red, blue considerable support, which fostered on. and yellow… I remember after this first creative sharing between the friends. visit sitting at a café table on the edge Initially, Mondrian was a little overwhelmed of a pavement for a very long time with The two artists contributed to several by the vast scale of London and the deep an astonishing feeling of quiet and groundbreaking exhibitions and escalators of the underground scared him repose… avant-garde publications in the 1930s, at first. But he quickly settled into London with their work often presented together. life and confessed to a friend that the city The visit marked the beginning of an London was becoming an important was actually having a liberating effect: enduring friendship and sparked an battleground for modern art and, together extraordinary creative relationship, lasting with his first wife Winifred, Nicholson was I’ve noticed that the change has had until Mondrian’s death ten years later. instrumental in bringing Mondrian’s work a good influence on my work… The When they met, Nicholson was a rising star to England. Winifred was Mondrian’s artistic situation doesn’t differ greatly of modern British art and Mondrian, twenty first English buyer when she purchased here from that in Paris. But one is even years his senior, was already recognised Composition with Double Line and Yellow more ‘free’ – London is big. as a leading artist of his generation. Their in 1935. They were instrumental in finding friendship spanned a turbulent decade other patrons for Mondrian among their Mondrian lived in London for almost of 20th century history as Europe headed circle of friends and associates at a time exactly two years. He was included in towards the Second World War. In the when securing sales was increasingly two further exhibitions during his time art world different movements vied for difficult. Nicholson also helped arrange for in the city and he worked on a number prominence on this fraught international Mondrian’s work to be exhibited in England of major canvases. The outbreak of war stage with surrealism becoming a powerful for the very first time, with three paintings finally separated Mondrian and Nicholson force. Against this backdrop, Mondrian being included in the seminal Abstract who moved to New York and Cornwall and Nicholson pursued a refined form of and Concrete exhibition, organised by respectively. After settling in America, and abstraction with a restrained vocabulary Nicolete Gray in 1936. The following year with war underway in Europe, he wrote to of colours and geometric forms, offering Mondrian contributed to the avant-garde Cecil Stephenson, ‘I do like New York but an alternative modern vision for art. They publication, Circle, which Nicholson in London I was of course more at home. I believed in the potential of abstraction to co-edited. Circle, published in 1937, always believe in the victory of Britain.’ attain the highest aesthetic and spiritual aimed to unite an international modernist power, with the balance and harmony of movement of artists, designers and their compositions offering an antidote to architects with an ambitious agenda to the violent discord of the modern world. revitalise modern civilisation. In both examples, the work of Mondrian and CURRICULUM LINKS: KS3+ Nicholson was already exploring Nicholson were presented as a pair. Art and Design, History, Art History, and abstraction before he met Mondrian but other Humanities II: GOING MODERN AND BEING BRITISH Writing in 1932, Paul Nash set out a Other artists in Britain, for example Percy painting; the realist depictions of labour fundamental problem faced by his fellow Wyndham Lewis, who had spearheaded and heroic struggle that would be created artists: Vorticism, the first radically modernist could then unite and inspire the working movement in England in the 1910s, classes in revolutionary action. Finally, Whether it is possible to ‘go modern’ launched scathing attacks on Fry and Bell. abstraction was pioneered by artists in and still ‘be British’ is a question Yet the critics marginalised his alternative Britain, such as Ben Nicholson, who was vexing quite a few people today… vision of modern art, Bell suggesting that included in the first all-abstract exhibition in the battle lines have been drawn up: Lewis had only gained a reputation as a October 1935.