Ben Nicholson, Picasso and Mondrian

A recent visit to London and the chance to see a couple of exhibitions; Picasso and Modern British Art at Tate Britain and Mondrian and Nicolson at the Courtauld.

As a result, I'm championing Ben Nicholson - for the feelings of warmth and calmness his work evokes in me. The colours are frequently a subtle mud, and textural, reminding me of old sacking, and the forms often repeat the most essential of mathematical shapes; circles or rectangles, while other fine lines might scribble across the surface.

 The Tate exhibition showed Nicholson picking up on Picasso and Braque's development of cubism with his well known Au Chat Botte:

The Courtauld exhibition was concerned with the couple of years in the 1930s when Nicholson and Mondrian lived in Hampstead, and how their work evolved as a result of their friendship. It was the start of Nicholson's white paintings, where light hitting the different levels of the work created shadow lines. Very subtle, very clever, but then by all accounts he was.

I was also much taken by his paintings of abstract blocks of colour, which used his muted palette to create depth, where the Mondrian reaffirmed the flat surface with his primaries.