Page 25 - Studio International - December1996

From the catalogue to the was not safe.
Abstract & Concrete exhibition We set off in deepest gloom in a second-hand car cost-
organized in 1936 by Nicolette
Gray—among the exhibitors ing £l7 (less than the fares by rail) and all the children,
were Gabo and Barbara one hammer and chisel and some paints.
Hepworth The last person we saw was Piet Mondrian in the street.
We begged him to come too, or to follow us. We said we
would find a studio for him. How could we look after him
if we could not get back ?
He said No. He kept on writing to us until the bombing
started and he left for U.S.A.
I shall always remember his eyes and elegant figure in
the street in Hampstead. The feeling that I should never
see him again. The feeling that I should never again see
his studio, or Ben's, or mine again.
And so it was. A saint in Hampstead. A much loved which I then occupied. I have always respected an artist's
friend—a great artist, whom we missed so very much. privacy, especially during the precious hours of daylight,
Once again I say that what he created was the beginning but Mondrian was lonely and in the evening one or more
of something—an opening of the door to all of us. q of the community of artists living in the district at that
Barbara Hepworth time would 'drop in' unannounced and he always
received us with the gracious dignity that was one of his
When Mondrian arrived in London all the friends in the characteristics. I do not remember any very profound
Mall scurried round finding things to furnish his room discussions—we were more worried about his material
which had been found for him, very near to the Mall comfort and practical difficulties—but no doubt we did
Studios. We all tried to make him comfortable. I seem to discuss his paintings and art in general. I once noticed,
remember that Gabo and I supplied a cot and a blue during a period of two or three visits, that he was always
quilt to keep him warm, etc. Also a pair of warm carpet- engaged in painting the black lines in the same picture,
slippers which he treasured. He was always on some kind and I asked him whether it was a question of the exact
of cranky diet and at this time he was on what was called width of the line. He answered No : it was a question of
`The Haye Diet' after a Dr Haye who was very popular its intensity, which could only be achieved by repeated
in France. We used to tease Mondrian, insisting that he applications of the paint. There is a tendency to consider
existed on carrots alone. He came to us often for lunch Mondrian's paintings as primarily the organization of
because I knew what he would and would not eat. form or space, but to the artist himself these qualities
When he came to our flat in Cholmley Gardens, he was could not be divorced from colour, and colour to him was
quite interested in my realistic paintings and portraits a quality of the utmost purity and exactitude. Hence any
and landscapes but gave me a solemn lecture in his attempt to re-paint or 'restore' a painting by Mondrian
broken French-English on how to set about becoming an (and it has been done) inevitably destroys the perfection
abstract painter (try first painting the landscape or por- which was the artist's supreme passion. q
trait all in one colour!). Herbert Read
Later on I volunteered to take him shopping for paints
and other studio equipment, and pursuing his desire for a My chief recollection of Mondrian's stay in London was
painting smock, we stopped at various clothing shops on that having found him a room in Parkhill Road, Belsize
the Hampstead Road, where he turned down shop- Park near where Barbara Hepworth and I lived and
keepers' cloth coats, but when he was shown a real smock worked in the Mall, he almost immediately transformed
with gathers at the yoke in the first artists' colourman we the usual dull, rented room into a sunlit South of France
came to, he bought that and two or three big tubes of oil (not as the South of France is lit now but as it was then) :
colour with a happy smile. this he did not only with the presence of his work but with
I well remember Mondrian's determination and plan, orange boxes and the simplest, cheapest kitchen furniture
which he carried out, to go to New York because of the bought in Camden Town and then painted an immacu-
pending war in which we, in our innocence, did not at late, glowing white. No one could make a white more
that time quite believe. q white than Mondrian. The effect of entering his room on
Miriam Gabo a foggy Hampstead night was indeed something. Our
problem was to find enough friends who understood his
When Mondrian sought refuge in England in 1938 he work and at the same time had enough money to buy it:
naturally came to Hampstead where he already had his smallest works were then about £25 and the larger
friends—Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, and others ones £45 but even so we did not have enough to buy one.
who had sometimes visited him in Paris. I myself had But a number of friends did buy and amongst those I
once penetrated to the immaculate white cell in which he remember are Leslie and Sadie Martin, Nancy Roberts,
worked there, and it was interesting to observe how Helen Sutherland, Nicolette Gray and Winifred Nichol-
quickly he reduplicated his familiar environment in son (who persistently helped him both in Paris and in
London. He found (or someone found for him) a room on London and accompanied him when he left Paris for
the ground floor of a house in Upper Parkhill Road which London). When war was inevitable we tried to persuade
was almost exactly opposite the studio in Mall Studios him to move out of London and Herbert Read offered to
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