This summer, Tate Liverpool will exhibit Mondrian and his Studios and Nasreen Mohamedi, as part of Tate Liverpool’s summer 2014 season entitled Abstraction into the World; Modernity, abstraction and architecture is investigated throughout the artworks of Piet Mondrian and Nasreen Mohamedi.
Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) was a Dutch painter and one of the most significant contributors to the development of abstract art founding the avant-garde movement De Stjil and producing an abundance of artworks; he evolved a non-representational art form which he termed neoplasticism comprised mainly of straight lines and clearly defined primary colours including the painting No. VI / Composition No.II 1920, which is part of Tate exhibition.
Piet Mondrian, 1872-1944, No. VI / Composition No.II 1920 Oil paint on canvas 997 x 1003 mm
The exhibition reveals a deluge of Mondrian’s masterpieces from his numerous Neo-Platic paintings-some of them never seen before in this country- to drawings from the 1914 series Pier and Ocean, where Mondrian inquires into the surface of the sea and its plastic qualities.
Piet Mondrian, 1872-1944, Composition with Red, Yellow and Blue 1927, Oil on canvas 750 x 520 mm
The audience will also have the opportunity to immerse themselves in Mondrian’s world, intensions and way of thinking physically “inhabiting” a life-size reconstruction of his Paris studio.
In addition, the exhibition investigates the artist’s broader relationship with architecture and urbanism mainly through a comparison between his earlier Parisian works and his later ones, intensely influenced by the frenetic modern cityscape of New York, where the painter lived the last years of his life.
Simultaneously Tate Liverpool is displaying over 60 works of Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-1990), a pioneer of the modernist tradition. Mohamedi, who studied art at Central Saint Martins in London and in Paris, started her career producing small-scale, abstract geometric drawings, painstakingly composed using pencil and pen favouring a figurative narrative style and gradually moving towards abstraction.
Nasreen Mohamedi, Untitled 500 x 700 mm Graphite and ink on paper
Nasreen Mohamedi, 1937-1990, Untitled, Ink on paper 490 x 720 mm
Synoptically, Tate Liverpool’s bustling exhibition embraces the concepts of freedom of thinking, the illusion of visible reality, the depiction of imagery, the withdrawal from physical objects to the realm of ideas; In brief words the beauty of abstract art.
by Xenia Founta
Images courtesy of Tate Liverpool
Mondrian and his Studios, Nasreen Mohamedi are at Tate Liverpool from June, 6 – October, 5, 2014
Tickets from £10.00 – £7.50