Marlow Moss

Composition in Yellow, Black and White

1949

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Not on display
Artist
Marlow Moss 1889–1958
Medium
Oil paint and wood on canvas
Dimensions
Object: 508 x 356 x 6 mm
frame: 616 x 465 x 54 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Presented by Miss Erica Brausen 1969
Reference
T01113

Display caption

Marlow Moss wrote, ‘I am no painter, I don’t see form, I only see space, movement and light’. She adopted the three-dimensional relief form, perhaps as an escape from the black structural grids familiar from the paintings of artists like Piet Mondrian, initially working only in white. Here, the composition is controlled by the two planes of black, which counterbalance the vertical lines. The white three-dimensional lines create variations of light, and the glow of the yellow, walled in by the relief, casts a sheen onto the white ground.

Gallery label, November 2015

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Catalogue entry

Marlow Moss 1890–1958
T01113 COMPOSITION IN YELLOW, BLACK AND WHITE 1949
Inscribed ‘Marlow Moss. 49.’ on canvas on lower right side of stretcher.
Canvas, with strips of painted wood in relief, 20×14× 1/4 (51×35·5×1).
Presented by Miss Erica Brausen 1969.
Coll: Miss Erica Brausen since 1953.
Exh: Hanover Gallery, Nov.–Dec. 1953 (5).

From 1927 a disciple and from 1929 a friend of Mondrian, whom she saw frequently till 1938, Marlow Moss was closely concerned with Neo-Plasticist theory. Miss Brausen wrote (30 April 1969) that T1113 ‘was based on mathematical theory.’

Published in:
The Tate Gallery: Acquisitions 1968-9, London 1969

Constructivism Neo-plasticism

Features

Marlow Moss, ‘Composition in Yellow, Black and White’ 1949
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A Queer Little History of Art: Composition in Yellow, Black and White

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