1938
1938
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
71.5 × 91.6 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by Loti Smorgon AO and Victor Smorgon AC, 2008
© Ben Nicholson/DACS, London. Licensed by Copyright Agency, Australia
Gallery location
Late 19th & early 20th Century Paintings & Decorative Arts Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
Ben Nicholson is regarded as the leader of the abstract movement in Britain, as he abandoned his ‘realistic’ treatments of the material world to focus upon the transcendental relationships between forms. From the 1920s he restricted himself to using only circles, squares and rectangles and simplified his palette, briefly eliminating colour altogether. Heralding Nicholson’s return to colour, 1938 was painted while Nicholson and his wife, the sculptor Barbara Hepworth, were sheltering the painter Piet Mondrian in London after he fled encroaching fascism in Europe. Infrared photography reveals a more prominent yellow grid underneath the present composition, anticipating the iconic yellow lattices of Mondrian’s later New York canvases.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
London, England
Inscription
inscribed in fibre-tipped pen on reverse u.c.: Top / (upward arrow) / Ben Nicholson / 1938
inscribed in fibre-tipped pen on reverse u.c.r.: Top / (upward arrow) Ben Nicholson 1938
Accession Number
2008.330
Department
International Painting
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited
Provenance
Sir John Summerson, London, c. 1939; Gimpel Fils, London; Richard S. Zeisler (acquired 1 February 1957); Private collection, London; purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria with funds donated by Loti Smorgon AO and Victor Smorgon AC, 2008.