Page 21 - Studio International - December1996

Mondrian in London

From September 1938 to September 1940, when he left for New York taking with him
many uncompleted canvases, Piet Mondrian lived and worked in London. Little has
been recorded of this period of his life.
Charles Harrison's outline of Mondrian's history during those two years introduces
reminiscences by some of Mondrian's friends who were in London at the time.

In 1931 Piet Mondrian had been among the founder where it had much in common with Mondrian's both in
members of the Paris-based Association Abstraction- aim and in quality. In 1936 Nicolette Gray's exhibition
Creation. His disciple Marjorie Moss, the stained-glass Abstract & Concrete illustrated just how close the relation-
designer Evie Hone, and Edward Wadsworth were ship had become between certain English painters and
among the British artists whose work was illustrated the sculptors and the avant garde of European abstraction.
next year in the first of the Association's annual Cahiers. In Another visitor to Mondrian's studio in 1934 was a
1933 Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth had pro- young American called Harry Holtzman. Holtzman kept
duced their first truly abstract works, and on a visit to closely in touch with Mondrian and in 1938 began to
Paris that summer they were invited to join the Associa- send him sums of money under pretext of buying paint-
tion. On the same visit Nicholson met Mondrian for the ings which he never intended to receive. Early in Sep-
first time and on his return to Paris the following year he tember, 1938, convinced, after Munich, that war was
visited him in his studio in the Rue de Depart. In the inevitable and believing that Paris would be the first
mid-thirties English painters and sculptors awoke to target for German bombers, Mondrian wrote to Holtzman
many of the interests and ideals that had been governing in New York asking for a formal invitation to the United
Continental artists through the twenties. Nicholson gained States which he could produce for the immigration
ground faster than any of his English contemporaries and authorities. Naum Gabo had left Paris for London in
during the years 1934-7 his art developed to a point 1936, spurred by a feeling that London was becoming
what Paris was ceasing to be—an environment in which
Piet Mondrian, photographed creative work was possible. Mondrian had been in touch
by Cecil Stephenson in 1938 with Gabo and Nicholson through his considerable
or 1939
contribution to Circle (published in 1937) which they
edited together with Martin. He wrote to them to expect
him and left for London on September 21, 1938, on his
way, as he believed, to America. Nicholson's first wife
Winifred travelled with him across France.
Nicholson, Hepworth and Gabo were living in Hamp-
stead, as were Herbert Read and Henry Moore, and they
found Mondrian a studio at 60 Parkhill Road. Nichol-
son's studio was at the bottom of the garden. Immediately
he was installed Mondrian began to work. The classically
simple canvases of the early thirties were giving way to
more architectonic works built up of taut grids with few,
if any, precisely-poised areas of colour. In the finest of
these the tense beauty of the earlier works is transmuted
on a larger scale into a grander poetry, wider in scope,
stable and assured.
At the outbreak of war Mondrian found himself in
virtual isolation as his immediate neighbours left London;
Gabo, Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth for St Ives, and
Henry Moore for Much Hadham. Ironically the blitz
came not to Paris but to London. The work which for
Mondrian required so great a concentration, had become
impossible. London had suddenly become too close to
Europe. He wrote to Winifred Nicholson in July 1940,
`Since Paris fell I did no more creative work'. He
remained until a bomb destroyed the house next door.
Late in September he left for New York, arriving on
October 3, 1940. Sadly he wrote back to a friend, Tor
art it was too difficult in London'.
q
Charles Harrison