John Piper C.H.

(British, 1903-1992)

Painting, 1936 (Forms on Dark Blue) 157.5 x 193 cm. (62 x 76 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
The Artist, by whom gifted to
Serge Chermayeff, by 1938, thence by descent to the present owners
Private Collection, U.S.A

Exhibited
London, Lefevre Gallery, Abstract and Concrete: An International Exhibition of Abstract Painting and Sculpture Today, April 1936, cat.no.2 (as Painting, 1936)
Probably London, Dorland Hall, The Piano Exhibition, A Modern Music Room, 14-26 September 1936 (catalogue untraced)
U.S.A Touring Exhibition (catalogue untraced)
London, Marlborough Gallery, John Piper, Retrospective Exhibition, March 1964, cat.no.30 (as Forms on Dark Blue, col.ill on the cover)

Literature
Herbert Read, Art Now, Faber & Faber, London, 1936, pl.74 (ill.b&w)
'Bentley, Near Halland, Sussex, A Modern Country House', Country Life, 2 November 1940 (ill.b&w, in situ)
S. John Woods, John Piper: Paintings, Drawings and Theatre Designs, Faber & Faber, London, 1955, pl.25 (ill.b&w)
Alan Powers, Serge Chermayeff: Designer, Architect, Teacher, RIBA, London, 2001 (col.ill., in situ)
David Fraser Jenkins & Frances Spalding, John Piper in the 1930s, Abstraction on the Beach, Merrell, London, 2003, p.44 (ill.b&w, in situ)
Frances Spalding, John Piper, Myfanwy Piper, Lives in Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009, p.84-88 (ill.b&w, in situ)
David Fraser Jenkins & Hugh Fowler-Wright, The Art of John Piper, Unicorn Press, London, 2015, p.108 (ill.b&w, in situ)
Darren Pih, John Piper, Tate and Pavilion Books, London, 2017, p.57

Painting, 1936 (Forms on Dark Blue) represents the zenith of John Piper's abstract engagement. The six-foot canvas is among British art's most ambitious paintings of the 1930s, and in both conception and legacy, the work has greatly contributed to the broader international modernist movement. Yet until now, Painting, 1936 (Forms on Dark Blue) was believed to have been destroyed, lost to fire. Having remained in the same important family collection since its execution, and unseen on these shores for six decades, the rediscovery of Painting, 1936 (Forms on Dark Blue) is a major addition to the extant canon of 20th century British art and presents a once-in-three-generational opportunity to acquire a true modernist masterpiece.

In June of 1934 Piper travelled to Paris and, through introductions from Ben Nicholson, he visited several artist's studios including those of Alexander Calder and Jean Hélion. This exposure to the forefront of European modernism catalysed a shift in Piper's practice, resulting in his earliest purely abstract works, initially constructions in wood and glass. The following year Piper undertook a further visit to Paris and moved to a new home - a well-proportioned farmhouse in Oxfordshire. In these spacious new environs and spurred by the artistic developments of his peers on the continent (as well as a small group of domestic artists and thinkers) Piper set about producing a series of abstract paintings. Realised between 1934-39, and confined to just roughly thirty-five examples, these works are considered among his most important contributions.

Piper's abstract paintings were first published through the ground-breaking quarterly art periodical Axis which he had co-founded with his wife to be Myfanwy Evans, and showcased in a handful of exhibitions. One such exhibition was Abstract and Concrete of 1936. Organised by curator Nicolete Gray with patronage from Helen Sutherland and Marcus Brumwell, this exhibition brought European and British abstract art together for the very first time for the British public.

Alongside Piper, the home-grown artists shown were Barbara Hepworth, Eileen Holding, Arthur Jackson, Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson, and the international names were Alexander Calder, Cesar Domela, Hans Erni, Naum Gabo, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Hélion, Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró, László Moholy-Nagy, and Piet Mondrian. Abstract and Concrete opened in Oxford in February of 1936, before traveling to Liverpool, London, and Cambridge.

In her catalogue introduction Gray simply stated 'I have organised [this exhibition] because, though much has been written and spoken about abstract art, very little has been seen in England. This exhibition is designed to give a concise representation of the contemporary practice of abstract painting, sculpture, and construction through the work of sixteen important artists of many nationalities' (exh.cat, Nicolete Gray, Abstract and Concrete: An International Exhibition of Abstract Painting and Sculpture Today, Lefevre Gallery, London, April 1936). Gray's plainspoken goal for the exhibition belies how radical a moment Abstract and Concrete was to prove. It is now considered the purest moment of synergy between the international abstract movement, and modern British painting. Yet at the time, beyond the small group of participants and advocates, the exhibition drew little attention. The Daily Mail declared it a 'jolly leg-pull', and for the purpose of customs and insurance the entire exhibition was deemed by Christie's as close to valueless (although a few of the works sold, including two by Mondrian).

Straddling the roles of artist, critic, and promotor - Piper was closely involved in the process of assembling Abstract and Concrete. He was responsible for the exhibition's poster and instrumental in persuading Duncan Macdonald of The Lefevre Gallery to take the show. Alongside Myfanwy he dedicated Axis number 5 entirely to the contents of the exhibition, with contributions sourced from Herbert Read, Hugh Gordon Porteus and Kennth R Walsh. Whilst personally Piper had some misgivings about the selection made, and resented the prospect that the group of artists could become labelled as a movement, he still declared the exhibition to be 'by far the best there has been in England in this century' (John Piper to Ben Nicholson, quoted in David Fraser Jenkins & Hugh Fowler-Wright, The Art of John Piper, Unicorn Press, London, 2015, p.110).

Piper's contribution to Abstract and Concrete initially included a 36 by 41 inch canvas Abstract I (1935, Tate Gallery). However, for the London leg of the exhibition, Piper altered his selection and replaced the Tate picture with the present work. Piper's re-selection was certainly borne from a desire to showcase his very latest developments – but the scale of the work, surely prepared with such an exhibition in mind, demonstrates the bravado of an artist vying with his most respected peers for attention on such an illustrious stage. The imposing canvas was hung between two sculptures by Giacometti, and eclipsed in scale nearby works by Calder and Domela.

Piper's ambitions didn't go unnoticed. Writing in Axis Walsh states:

"What strikes one about Abstract Art is not its limitations but its possibilities. Piper swallows whole as much as he can take. It is as if a man should behold a beautiful goblet; he brushes aside its beauty to come at its truth, its value; he smelts the beauty down to a block of silver or gold. This is the Puritanical austerity of spirit. It is the very opposite to promiscuity of contact; it takes a contact in its wholeness and by earnestness and honesty reduces it to a value. The fun begins when you have the metal in block form. Most Puritans at this point have put it in the bank. Or can one re-work the metal to a beauty firm enough to conquer truth?" (Kenneth R. Walsh, 'Abstraction as Weapon', Axis no.5, Spring 1936, p.25).

To employ Walsh's analogy, the 'beauty' which Piper has 'smelted' to the 'truth' of the present work is a cacophony of influence. Some influences, as Frances Spalding has recently observed in an article regarding the present work for the Bonhams Magazine, include the new world of 1936; travel by plane, buildings of glass. Yet elements within the present work specifically resonate with Piper's other more 'ancient' endeavours of the period. The tessellating-coloured forms, anchored by black in Painting, 1936 (Forms on Dark Blue) are not disconnected to Piper's stained allegorical glass window designs of a decade earlier. And the subtle modulated expanse of the titular dark blue that floods the picture plane undoubtedly references the coastal landscapes of southern England which gave rise to the many seaside collages that Piper also made in 1936.

The pairing of both contemporary and heritage notes is what perhaps most sets Piper apart from his Abstract and Concrete peers. The hard lines and flat application of Nicholson and Mondrian's contributions specifically are absolute in their credence to the abstract cause. Piper on the other hand employed carefully placed moments of soft brushed edges, resulting in a painterliness which was remarked on at the time with S John Woods, writing shortly after the present works debut:

"John Piper values paint before his label. In looking at Constable I feel "Here is a man who is painting'' not "Here is a man who is painting landscapes." Not so with abstract artists. Simple geometrical abstract art, as Moholy-Nagy has convincingly shown in countless articles and his book 'New Vision' and as Nicholson has shown in his reliefs, is concerned rather with light than with paint. Piper has returned paint to abstract painting and in doing so has laid his finger on a crucial spot." (S John Woods, 'Time to Forget Ourselves', Axis no.6, July 1936, p.20).

It was most likely at the Abstract and Concrete exhibition that Painting, 1936 (Forms on Dark Blue) attracted the attentions of Serge Chermayeff. Chermayeff was a Russian-born architect, industrial designer, and writer. In 1930 Chermayeff had opened a London based architectural practice and three years later, was joined there by the German architect Erich Mendelsohn. Their projects together included the famous De La Warr Pavilion. By 1936 Chermayeff was building himself a modernist home at Bentley Wood, East Sussex. This property is now considered one of the most important buildings constructed in Britain in the interwar years and was recently awarded grade II listed status.

Chermayeff and Piper, who had quite possibly met at the offices of The Architectural Review, struck up a friendship that would ultimately last for 60 years. In the 1930s the two men collaborated on several projects together. One project was an early television broadcast for the BBC entitled Art in Modern Architecture, and for another project Piper travelled to Europe at Chermayeff's behest to make a copy of a Picasso painting which could not be shipped to London for its intended exhibition that Chermayeff was staging.

In September of 1936 Chermayeff designed an exhibition of pianos at London's Dorland hall. An entire room was to be designed around Piper's abstracts and almost certainly Painting, 1936 (Forms on Dark Blue) hung as a centrepiece. This delighted Piper, who wrote to fellow artist Winifred Nicholson to say 'It pleased me so much as it seemed the proper way to deal with that kind of painting, and so much more proper than hanging in galleries'. (John Piper to Winifred Nicholson, quoted in Frances Spalding, John Piper, Myfanwy Piper, Lives in Art, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009, p.84)

Painting, 1936 (Forms on Dark Blue) was one of Piper's largest and most significant paintings to date. It was a gift from Piper to Chermayeff, an act which signifies the strength of their kinship. Chermayeff appropriately hung the painting above his piano in Bentley Wood's open living space. His broader collection at this time also featured works by Calder, Hélion, Nicholson and Moore - whose 1938 major carving Recumbent Figure was commissioned by Chermayeff for Bentley Wood's terrace, and would latterly be added to the Tate Gallery Collection (the artist's first work to do so).

Following the outbreak of war Chermayeff emigrated to the United States in 1940 where he and his family would settle, at first in San Francisco before moving to the East coast. He continued to strive and to champion modernism, taking eminent appointments at Harvard, Yale, and Chicago's Institute of Design.

At this moment Painting, 1936 (Forms on Dark Blue) was initially put into storage in the UK, it seems, in the Harrods repository. This building sustained bomb damage by the Luftwaffe with considerable impact to a portion of its contents. Whether it was this incident, or the fact Chermayeff's London flat was also destroyed in the blitz, that has led to historians recording the loss by fire of Painting, 1936 (Forms on Dark Blue) is not known. In actuality the work was shipped to San Francisco, with Chermyeff writing to Piper from his home on Pacific Avenue to confirm 'The large painting you gave me survived a buffeting at sea + hangs ... in our apt. To our perpetual delight' (Serge Chermayeff to John Piper, Tate Gallery Archive).

The work then crossed the US and hung for a period in the sitting room of Chermayeff's self-built modernist home on Lincoln Street, New Haven. In the 1950s, Chermayeff built himself a holiday home on Cape Cod, also now lauded for its architectural prowess, and writing from there in May of 1952 his wife Barbara relayed to Piper 'Your large abstract picture which you gave us, John, is on our walls in this cottage and I am looking at it at this moment with much pleasure' (Barbara Chermayeff to John Piper, Tate Gallery Archive). In an apparently later but undated letter Barbara mentioned that 'By the way, the picture you gave us – the big abstract – is now on tour all over the states. It was shown in Boston for some weeks + the last I hear of it – was from Buffalo but it may have moved on somewhere else by now' (Barbara Chermayeff to John Piper, Tate Gallery Archive).

The Chermayeff's loaned Painting, 1936 (Forms on Dark Blue) to the Marlborough Gallery in 1964 for Piper's first retrospective with his new dealers, and there the work graced the cover of the exhibition catalogue. Interestingly, as an inscription on the stretcher reveals, the work was repaired by Piper at this time – the necessity of which is unsurprising given that as Chermayeff himself notes 'Your painting which survived the bombing, a wet journey to San Francisco – it had to be touched up a bit' (Serge Chermayeff to John Piper, Tate Gallery Archive). The painting was then returned to the States, and to the house on Cape Cod, where it hung until this year.

As Chermayeff's letters to Piper testify, Serge and John's long friendship and their shared vision for modernism of the 1930s, became of increasing importance to the ageing Serge. In a late letter of 1988, he writes 'In our house here in the middle of the national seashore park on Cape Cod. We are daily greeted by your great abstractions of the thirties' (Serge Chermayeff to John Piper, Tate Gallery Archive). A final letter from Serge to John and Myfanwy thought to date to the 1990s opens 'JP's 1936 master piece + photos, I sleep looking at them in my bedroom, Have walked in my mind through them a hundred times + still learning' (Serge Chermayeff to John Piper, Tate Gallery Archive). This letter is revealing of the immense power that Painting, 1936 (Forms on Dark Blue) still held for Serge after over fifty years of ownership – tied up with memories of Piper and Chermayeff's simpatico minds in their prime, and the marks the two men would make on the world. Serge Chermayeff signs off to his dear compadre 'All my love to old friend, all the best to you for the years of generosity' (ibid).