Modern Landscapes

Karl Weschke, The Nile near Kom Ombo  1994

Weschke went to Egypt, on an organised tour, in 1990 and again in 1992. His work already showed his fascination with the notion of immensity, and the powerful effect on him of the ancient sites was inevitable. He travelled south from Cairo to Aswan, by way of Giza and the Valley of Kings at Luxor. Kom Ombo is on the eastern bank of the Nile north of Aswan. While awed by the antiquity of such things as the unfinished obelisk near Aswan, the artist was also powerfully affected by the landscape. Here, the spare painting style emphasises the vastness of the desert that towers over the figures and camels on the riverbank.

Gallery label, August 2004

Marlow Moss, Composition in Yellow, Black and White  1949

Moss wrote, ‘I am no painter, I don’t see form, I only see space, movement and light’. Moss’s three-dimensional works, which Moss first made in white, relate to the structural grids popular in the Dutch art movement ‘De Stijl’ and the paintings of abstract artist Piet Mondrian. Here, two small black horizontal planes counterbalance a bright yellow section and a network of white lines that stand out from the canvas. Together these white, yellow and black elements interact to create a sense of movement and light.

Gallery label, August 2023

Victor Vasarely, Nives II  1949–58

Marlow Moss, Untitled  c.1950

This is one of three sculptures by Marlow Moss in which sheets of metal have been folded to create a pattern based on the structure and planes of a tetrahedron. The location of the other two is not known, but one of them is identified in a black and white archival photograph held in Tate Archives, which has an inscription by Moss on the reverse giving the title as Construction Based on a Tetrahedron and the date 1950. This photograph shows a construction composed of the same pattern of repeated tetrahedron planes as seen in Untitled c.1950, but extended so that it is formed of approximately five times as many elements. Each of the sculptures is fixed to a narrow cuboid base.The structure of this sculpture is characteristic of Moss’s three-dimensional work, which involved the exploration of concepts of geometrical mathematics. Moss is known to have read the philosophy of mathematician Matila Ghyka, whose ideas were founded upon the Pythagorean concept that the universe is formed entirely from principles of geometry. Since the late 1920s Moss had been familiar with the work and theories of the pioneering abstract artist Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), and is known to have met him in Paris in 1929.Moss attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London between 1917 and 1919. Moss’s life during the 1920s was characterised by movements between London and Cornwall. After a four-year period in Cornwall, in 1923 Moss returned to London. Moss’s name then changed from Marjorie to Marlow. A few years later, Moss was again in Cornwall, studying at Penzance Art School. In London from 1926, Moss had an exhibition with the London Group in 1927. That year Moss also moved to Paris, and attended the Académie Moderne and met Netty Nijhoff-Wind, who previously owned this sculpture. Part of a relatively varied community of artists associated with the Paris-based group Abstraction-Création in the mid-1930s, Moss here encountered the ideas and works of Swiss and French constructivists Max Bill (1908–1994) and Jean Gorin (1899–1981).During the Second World War Moss stayed with Nijhoff in the Netherlands, before fleeing for London in 1940, leaving a lot of work behind. Upon returning to England, Moss again travelled to Cornwall, and settled in Lamorna, south-west of Penzance. It is here that Moss began to make metal constructions such as a polished copper column of c.1944, partly inspired by having attended a course in architecture at Penzance during the war. Although Moss continued to make regular trips to Paris after the end of the war and exhibited in international groupings such as the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Lamorna remained Moss’s permanent residence until her death in 1958.The sculpture Untitled c.1950 is characteristic of Moss’s sculptural works of the 1950s, many of which were conceived as explorations in geometrical relationships. In material and form is it reminiscent of the totemic but restrained resonance of works by the modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876–1957) and the abstract sculpting of geometrical planes in the early work of Naum Gabo (1890–1977). In its basis upon non-representational geometry it is also closely connected to the tenets of post-war constructivism in Britain and further afield. Within the artist’s output of this period, these tetrahedron constructions are comparable to other metal constructions formed of geometric elements, such as the steel Spatial Construction 1949 (Nijhoff/Oosthoek Collection, Zurich), and later forms of polished brass sheets, including Concentric Circles Projected in Space 1953 (whereabouts unknown). Over the following years Moss’s sculptures took on added complexity regarding the range of materials and forms assembled together, as demonstrated by Balanced Forms in Gunmetal on Cornish Granite 1956–7 (Tate T01114). Further reading Florette Dijkstra, Marlow Moss: Constructivist the Reconstruction Project, translated Annie Wright, Den Bosch, Netherlands 1995.Lucy Howarth, Marlow Moss (1889–1958), Ph.D. thesis, University of Plymouth 2008, series illustrated p.129.Sabine Schaschl (ed.), A Forgotten Maverick: Marlow Moss, exhibition catalogue, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich 2017, illustrated p.83.Rachel Rose SmithAugust 2018Revised 2023

Donna Conlon, Coexistence  2003

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, White, Black and Yellow (Composition February)  1957

White, Black and Yellow (Composition February) 1957 is a painting in a landscape format that uses abstract elements of line and colour to describe a view onto a three-dimensional space. A series of densely-painted black lines or shafts stand across the painting at acute angles. Set behind these prominent black structures are thinner black lines: some of these lie perpendicular to the vertical black lines like a horizon-line or a scaffold; others are angled so they seem to describe perspectival lines leading from the foreground towards a more distant space. Within this structure are placed three yellow lozenges or patches of colour which punctuate and describe the middle ground. Each is physically close to a vertical black line of corresponding thickness, and their variation in size enhances the suggestion of depth behind the picture plane. The largest is closest to the lower edge of the painting while the two smaller ones, placed higher up, seem to be further behind. The suggestion of depth is also achieved by the overpainting of some black lines in the middle ground with white paint. This wider field of white and grey seems to describe a low-lying ground or floor (upon which some darker sections might be read as shadows) and a visual field saturated with light.

Rasheed Araeen, Lovers  1968

Araeen trained as a civil engineer, and his sculptures are constructed using geometric forms. Lovers combines two structures, each of which consists of a series of triangles that have been rotated and orientated in different ways. The work can be shown in two different configurations: either with the two parts next to each other, or on top of each other. This introduction of alternative possibilities challenges the idea of the artwork as a fixed object conceived by a single individual.

Gallery label, October 2016

Paul Feiler, Janicon LXII  2002

Janicon LXII 2002 is a square abstract painting on canvas. This canvas has been stretched over a built-up stretcher that, with the addition of silver leaf around the edges of the canvas, provides an illusion of a separate frame for the painting. This is however not the case, and the silver leaf border sets up the sharply recessive space that is described by succeeding horizontal and vertical bands of pale blues, greys, greens and browns. The back board of this illusionistic space is a field of similarly coloured vertical bands, in the centre of which is an upright oblong, bounded off-centre in gold leaf. The title brings together references of the double Janus head that looks both back in time and towards the future, with the gold and silver leaf of Byzantine religious icons. Despite the use of geometry and pale colour, the paintings in Feiler’s extensive Janicon series, of which this is a part, are built up of many layers of colour over a long period of time.

Jesus Rafael Soto, Horizontal Movement  1963

As the spectator passes this work, an optical effect causes the background of black and white lines to vibrate and flicker. Soto described Horizontal Movement as ‘one of the first truly mobile works that I had made’, referring to the addition of an iron rod that hangs in front of the lines. As in all his works the background lines are drawn by hand.

Gallery label, September 2004

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson, The Soul of the Soulless City (‘New York - an Abstraction’)  1920

The skyscrapers and railways of New York epitomised the dynamism of the modern metropolis. This painting, originally titled ‘New York – an Abstraction’, shows the former-futurist Nevinson’s enthusiastic response, in which the urgency of the city is matched with a modernist style of painting derived from pre-war abstraction. However, Nevinson’s work did not receive the success for which he had hoped, and his initial excitement gave way to the disillusion indicated by his revised title.

Gallery label, September 2016

Sir Terry Frost, Winter 1956, Yorkshire  1956

Frost's move from St Ives to Leeds in Yorkshire introduced him to a new landscape. In the Yorkshire Dales he felt like a tiny presence in a huge expanse of space.

He related this unusually long, thin work to a particular experience: tobogganing with friends down a steep hill in Leeds, quite out of control. He said the black form at the top left derived from a Russian hat worn by his friend; the long sweep of the lines evokes his experience of careering down the hill.

Gallery label, September 2004

Cornelia Parker CBE RA, Measuring Niagara with a Teaspoon  1997

Created by the British artist Cornelia Parker in 1997, Measuring Niagara with a Teaspoon is a coiled length of silver wire mounted on a square of dark grey card that is set inside a glazed, pale wooden frame. The silver that makes up the piece of wire previously took the form of a Georgian teaspoon which, as the artist explained in a 2003 interview, has been melted and ‘“drawn” to the height of Niagara Falls’ – a set of three waterfalls situated on the border between the United States and Canada (Parker in Lisa Tickner, ‘A Strange Alchemy: Cornelia Parker’, Art History, vol.26, no.3, June 2003, p.385). While the precise length of the piece of wire is unknown, in 2013 the artist stated that it measures ‘approximately 187 feet’ (Cornelia Parker, ‘Works’, in Blazwick 2013, p.123). It is coiled into a thick ring that occupies a small portion of the grey card near to the centre of the frame and has numerous strands curving outwards around its edges. The frame is made from untreated ash wood and has mitred corners, and its reverse side comprises a sheet of fibreboard secured with masking tape.

Marlow Moss, Untitled (White, Black, Blue and Yellow)  c.1954

Marlow Moss, Balanced Forms in Gunmetal on Cornish Granite  1956–7

Marlow Moss, born Marjorie Moss, studied briefly at the Slade School and then at Penzance Art School in Cornwall. In 1927 after a short but crucial visit to Paris, in which Moss was overwhelmed by the work of the painter Piet Mondrian, Moss broke off connections with England and went to live and work in Paris. Moss made contact with Mondrian then and subsequently became a pupil of Léger and Ozenfant. With the advent of the Second World War, Moss fled from France and returned to Cornwall. There, Moss made abstract paintings in pure colours and some geometric sculptural compositions, of which this is a rare example.

Gallery label, August 2023

Henri Matisse, Trivaux Pond  1916 or 1917

The purchase of a car in 1917 allowed Matisse to take all his painting equipment into the woods. He made several works at Trivaux Pond, in the landscaped park of the Bois de Meudon on the outskirts of Paris. Here, the verticals of the trees establish a strong rhythm. Matisse treats the surface of the pond loosely, simplifying the forms and merging reflections with their surroundings. Although within the immediate environs of the city, Matisse imbued the park with an imagined ruralism.

Gallery label, August 2004

Arshile Gorky, Waterfall  1943

Gorky was born in Armenia, but was forced to flee Turkish persecution, and in 1920 settled in the USA. His early work was strongly influenced by Pablo Picasso and the European Surrealists. In the summer of 1942, Gorky spent three weeks in Connecticut making drawings from nature. He went on to produce a series of paintings that refer to natural forms. In this painting, amorphous shapes and drips of liquid paint suggest the fluidity of the waterfall.

Gallery label, August 2004

Piet Mondrian, The Tree A  c.1913

Mondrian’s fascination with trees developed out of his earlier landscape painting. This is one of his last paintings of trees and is based on realistic sketches made in the Netherlands. After settling in Paris and absorbing the influence of Cubism, Mondrian reworked the image almost to abstraction. The trunk and branches are condensed to a network of verticals and horizontals. He acknowledged the inspiration of nature but added, ‘I want to come as close as possible to the truth, and abstract everything from that until I reach the foundation of things’.

Gallery label, April 2013