#marlow moss

[st-mish]

Marlow Moss, Untitled (White, Black, Blue and Yellow), c. 1954, Tate St. Ives, Saint Ives, England, UK. Source

[germanpostwarmodern]

Long discounted as an epigone of Piet Mondrian, British artist Marlow Moss in recent years has received the reappraisal she deserved: proceeding from her retrospective at Haus Konstruktiv Zurich in 2017 her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions and gained her work both attention and critical research. But while most exhibitions primarily included her paintings the current exhibition at Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin focuses on her sculptural works: until July 26 „Creating Space: The Constructivist Marlow Moss - With Leonor Antunes, Tacita Dean, Florette Dijkstra and Ro Robertson“ shows nine of the remaining ten known sculptures by Marlow Moss, archival photographs of her lost sculptural works and lets her works engage in a dialogue with the four contemporary artists.

The show is accompanied by the present catalogue, published by Hirmer, that contains both numerous illustrations and insightful essays by, among others, Moss experts Lucy Howarth and Florette Dijkstra. Howarth, who co-curated the exhibition, uses Moss’ own words „the substantial, the visible, the object“ as point of departure for the exhibition: written down by Moss in the context of a statement of practice, Howarth connects Moss’ work with the contemporary artists and one of the words. In so-doing she also initiates a complex reflective process about the relationship between sculpture, drawing and photography. This relationship becomes all the more palpable since Moss’ sculptures appear in all of the these forms, a consequence of the destruction of much of her archive and work during WWII.

Florette Dijkstra on the other hand reflects on her decade-long (and still ongoing) artistic research into Moss’ oeuvre as well as her efforts to bring her back into the limelight of art history. This quest has been particularly difficult due to the dispersion of her estate and the often unknown whereabouts of her surviving works.

In view of the latter circumstances „Creating Space“ is meritorious and important exhibition that, also thanks to the present catalogue, finally acknowledges the significance of the sculptor Marlow Moss, also for contemporary artistic practices. Highly recommended!

[everythingabitbit]

Marlow Moss, 1, Black and white, 1932. 2, Untitled, 1946. 3, Automatic drawing, end of her life. Kunstmuseum, The Hague

[thesobsister]

‘Her time has come’: did Mondrian owe his success to a cross-dressing lesbian artist who lived in a Cornish cove?

Piet Mondrian found fame, fortune and glory with his grid-like paintings lit with basic colours. But did many of his ideas come from Marlow

Marlow Moss and her influence on, and interaction with, Piet Mondrian.

(Moss at left, Mondrian on the right)

Marlow Moss

Exceptional sketches by Marlow Moss on display at Kunstmuseum Den Haag.

[germanpostwarmodern]

Marlow Moss, Untitled, 1932, Locarno, Fondazione Marguerite Arp. Photo taken at Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck in November 2025.

[rearte2]

by Marlow Moss, 1935

[germanpostwarmodern]

Marlow Moss, Untitled, 1932, Locarno, Fondazione Marguerite Arp. Photo taken in October 2025 at Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Germany.

[germanpostwarmodern]

In recent years Marlow Moss’s art finally has been fetched from the shadows of Piet Mondrian and evaluated as an individual contribution to modern art and constructivism in particular. A considerable share of Moss’s reevaluation was due to Lucy Howarth’s research and restless effort to resurrect her from obscurity. Accordingly, Howarth was predestined to contribute the volume about Moss to the „Modern Women Artists“ series published by Eiderdown Books: although the small book only comprises 64 pages it nonetheless provides a concise overview of Moss’s life and work, vividly written and comprehensively illustrated. Right at the beginning of the book Howarth addresses the two questions that repeatedly come up for discussion in relation to Moss: one is her gender identity and two is whether Mondrian „stole“ the double-line from her. As Howarth explains, Moss in 1919 abandoned her former self as Marjorie for the ambivalent Marlow and radically changed her visual appearance towards the more masculine look documented in the many portrait photographs e.g. Stephen Storm took of her. Concerning the double-line issue, Howarth paints a more differentiated picture of the affair and discusses the differing characters the double-line takes on in their respective works. In this context she also sheds light on the often paternalistic and se*ist reading of Moss‘s art by male art historians who not least contributed to Moss being labeled a „disciple of Mondrian“ rather than a colleague.

It is one of the great strengths of Howarth‘s little book that she, despite the briefness of the account, provides a nuanced and lucid history of Moss‘s life and work as well as the misconceptions and gender-based prejudices she was faced with and which for a long time clouded her reception. As a result, and in view of the highly readable nature of the book, it is fully and warmly recommended to anyone seeking to get to know Marlow Moss and her art better.