Ben Nicholson (1894-1982)

1940-42 (two forms)

Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth brought their family to St Ives in 1939 to escape the dangers of wartime London. During the 1930s Nicholson had spent time in Paris absorbing ideas from the Cubist work of Picasso and Braque and the abstract art of Arp, Giacometti and Mondrian. Nicholson became a key figure in promoting these new artistic concepts in Britain.

Nicholson began creating abstract paintings made up of coloured shapes in the mid-1930s. They use bright primary colours, black and shades of grey, brown and blue and owe something to the work of Piet Mondrian who Nicholson met in 1934. He made a series of paintings based on two forms that explore the relationship between pairs of objects, an interest shared at the time by Hepworth and Henry Moore.

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