This is my tribute to a great artist – Pieter Mondrian (1872-1944). It was made for and shown at the annual Festival of Quilts in 2018, this year, at the NEC. Mondrian was one of the pioneers of 20th century art. His search for universal values led him to prize the spiritual in painting reduced to simple geometrical elements. Mondrian painted using very specific rules where geometric figures were only ever to be the result of linear intersections and never to be separate forms. Colour was reduced to the three most saturated primaries – red, yellow, and blue - creating a stark contrast of black lines with bright colours. His works have a forceful impact.

The St Ives artists, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, were amongst those shaped by Mondrian. At Nicholson’s invitation, Mondrian moved from Paris to London in the late 1930s where the two worked in neighbouring studios in Hampstead. They were separated by the outbreak of war when Mondrian moved to New York and Nicholson to Cornwall but over 60 letters survive, written by Mondrian to Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth (Nicholson’s then wife), covering the ten years of their friendship.