Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating exhibition at Tate Modern comparing 20th century abstract artists Hilma af Klint and Piet Mondrian. This show guided you through how these artists reached their abstract ideas based on similar ideas and influences and yet they never met. I thought it was an interesting idea to bring together two artists who didn’t know each other as so many shows are about relationships. The show explained simply and well how their art developed and for the first time I understood Mondrian’s grid pictures. It was an excellent idea to have a section at the centre called The Ether which went into more depth on some of the ideas without getting in the way of the narrative and the paintings. I liked that you could enter this from two directions either quite near the start of your visit or near the end. I did it near the start but popped back in later for more explanation of Theosophy which I hadn’t really understood. I was more drawn to Mondrian’s work which seemed to be driven more by l...

Fascinating exhibition at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin of work by John Beattie responding to Mondrian. The centre price was a video of the reconstruction of Mondrian’s studio. Unfortunately it was a hour long but I dipped in and out a few times. In rooms either side were large black and white photographs of squares from Mondrian pictures. Rather clever to take the colour out of the pieces and yet you knew what they were. As the gallery has Francis Bacon’s studio it spoke to the wider collection. Closes 8 August 2023

A scholarly exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery examining the relationship between Piet Mondrian and Ben Nicholson during the 1930's. when they were leading forces of abstract art in Europe . The works of both artists were hung next to each other so that you could compare and contrast easily. I had not really understood Mondrian before but seeing the works up close showed me that there is much more artistry in them that a reproduced image can ever show. I was fascinated by the letters and other ephemera which were shown with the pictures and the detail of the artists’ lives this showed. I find the theory of abstract art rather serious and philosophical but this was an exhibition which will make me take more interest in abstract work as objects and individual pictures. 

Very good study day at the Courtauld Institute of Art to complement their current exhibition looking at the work of Piet Mondrian and Ben Nicholson and the links between them. The morning looked at the lives of the two artists up to the point they met with Caroline Levitt looking at Mondrian and Jeremy Lewison at Nicholson. I did not know much about either artist and these talks gave me good overview of their artistic development up to 1934. The afternoon put them in the context of 1930s artistic London in an interesting talk by Sam Rose, although I could have done with a few less long quotes. Finally we brought the two artists together in a talk from co-curator of the exhibition Lee Beard. This was a fascinating overview of the parallels between their work and how they may have influenced each other. I would have liked to hear a bit more about the personal links between them as later in the exhibition I was fascinated to see that Winfred Nicholson, Ben’s wife, was the firs...