Marlow Moss and Mondrian: did Moss influence Mondrian's double-line style?

The Kunstmuseum in The Hague is exhibiting Marlow Moss’s works alongside Piet Mondrian’s, and curators report that Moss’s use of double or parallel lines shaped exchanges between the two artists and the later appearance of the motif in Mondrian’s work.

Marlow Moss’s work is at the centre of a renewed art‑historical conversation following an exhibition at the Kunstmuseum in The Hague and the museum’s acquisition of a suitcase of her sketches. The show places Moss’s paintings and sketches beside comparable works by Piet Mondrian and highlights exchanges between the two artists. Moss lived between Cornwall, Paris and the Netherlands and spent late years in Lamorna Cove, Cornwall. The new attention follows recent auction and exhibition interest and a growing focus on women and queer figures in modern art. Key facts: - The Kunstmuseum in The Hague acquired a suitcase of Marlow Moss sketches in 2025 and is showing her paintings and sketches alongside Piet Mondrian’s works. - Curators say Moss used double or parallel lines and that exchanges between her and Mondrian helped shape the later use of that motif in his 1930s compositions. - Moss was active in Paris in the late 1920s and was a member of the Abstraction-Creation group; she often dressed in masculine clothes and lived with her partner Netty Nijhoff. - A 1944 work by Moss sold at Sotheby’s in London for £609,000, and her sculpture will be shown at the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin in April. - Much of Moss’s oeuvre was lost during the war, and the newly surfaced sketches include mathematical plans and automatic drawings that illuminate her working methods. Summary: The current display and the discovery of the sketches have prompted museums and scholars to reassess Moss’s role in early non‑figurative art and to emphasise artistic exchange rather than lone invention. Upcoming exhibitions, including a Berlin sculpture show, will extend that reassessment and bring more of her work into public view.