Marlow Moss: composition yellow, blue, black, red and white 1956-57
Howarth, Lucy (2025) Marlow Moss: composition yellow, blue, black, red and white 1956-57. NGV Magazine (54). pp. 18-21. ISSN 0066-7935
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The NGV has acquired a 1956-57 work by British artist Marlow Moss, Composition yellow, blue, black, red and white (fig.1) – a rare and increasingly sought-after oeuvre – it is the first Moss work to enter a public collection in Australia.
Identifying works by Moss, with slightly differing perfunctory titles and varying measurements (in inches in London and New York, and centimetres in Europe) is not without difficulty, but there are two aspects that make this particular work stand out: its elongated vertical format; and its use of all three primary colours in addition to black and white. In the context of the stringent grammar of Neoplasticism such features hold significance. The tall narrow canvas is discussed amongst scholars as having originated with Moss before being adopted by Mondrian and Jean Gorin, alongside other contributions to the language, such as doubled, coloured and truncated lines. Some perceive a ‘tragic’ character in the verticality, corresponding to Moss’s feelings about the wartime political situation, expressed in letters. It is also, in the gendered lexicon of Mondrian, masculine – as opposed to supine femininity. This codification, intended or not by Moss, takes on special resonance when invoked alongside the series of photographic portraits of Moss taken by Faan, aka Stephen Storm, and indeed Moss’s masculine dress and appearance in everyday life as documented by photographs and contemporary accounts.
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