to the sweeping motifs of the lacquer panels at the salon in Mme Mathieu-Lévy’s Rue de Lota apartment.68
3.18 Black, grey and beige speckled gouache with swirling lines, 1920s, paper, card, crayon and pencil © NMI
Gray revisited this style of work in the early 1930s using a much brighter palette. One gouache has a bright yellow ground with abstract motifs in white in the centre. Thin black lines, coming from the border’s edges, intersect the central motifs. It is incomplete but the design resembles quite closely the back of a lacquer door panel design with raised sabi which appeared in an article in Vogue in August 1917.69 The motifs used at the centre are also reminiscent of the designs of the Futurists and the work of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), notably the Nude Descending a Staircase no.2, 1912.70 Gray seldom used yellow for the entire background of her gouaches and collages. It is possible that was an early study for another collage which she completed during the early 1930s.71
3.19 Black and white speckled gouache with white lightening motif, 1920s, paper, card, crayon and pencil © NMI
From 1918-1921 Gray produced a number of black and white gouaches with thin straight lines. Stylistically these gouaches were a precursor to three lacquer screens, one large one produced for a client called Mme Jean Henri-Labourdette and two small ones, which Gray made in the early twenties – all with a variation on the theme of incised linear decoration in a deep brown lacquer ground. These were shown in Wendingen, published in 1924. One black gouache with thin white lines stylistically looks to the simplicity of Paul Klee’s artwork from the late 1920s and early 1930s. Like Klee’s painting dating from this era Gray’s designs are punctuated with symbolic references which are difficult to decipher. They provide an orientation, pointing out directions, set signals, but without entirely answering the pictorial riddle. In one particular gouache a long white line runs horizontally from left to right. Out of this line evolves a series of others completed in chalk.72
3.20 Black with white circle gouache and collage, 1920s, paper, paint © NMI
Russian Suprematism and its successor Constructivism, as well as the Dutch movement De Stijl were deeply rooted in an attempt to change the world and to create a functional, normative art. These movements envisioned a collective, universal art for all, removed from individualism and subjectivity. Russian avant-garde, especially in its Suprematist phase, was rooted in pre-revolutionary anarchism and later condemned by the Russian communist revolutionary and politician Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924). Suprematism was more romantic and mythical, while Constructivism was more futuristic and technological. Gray’s artwork and series of carpet gouaches which she designed in 1918-1921 also recalls the work of Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) and Ivan Kliun (1873-1943). Both Malevich’s Suprematist Composition, 191573 and Kliun’s painting Suprematism, 1915-1674 reoccur in several of Gray’s compositions. Malevich and Kliun used thin lines in various colours on a white ground. Malevich emphasised reducing objects to their primary forms and colours. Kazimir Malevich’s use of the black squares was revisited by Gray several times and she produced a series of squares directly inspired by his ideas, either being a play on the square itself or with the deliberate interjection or placing of a circular or triangular motif; Navy blue square with a white stripe,75 Black and speckled square,76 and Black with white circle.77
Gray owned a copy of Classique Baroque Moderne, written by Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931) which was an important publication expressing the ideas of the De Stijl movement.78 The movement emphasised a return to basic, primary colours, and the use of geometric and rectilinear shapes through abstraction. This often involved balancing one colour and one form against another. Gray also acquired for her library Neo Plasticisme by Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) who advocated these ideas and envisaged in his art the formulation of a universal ideal of happiness.79 He considered himself to be the prophet and his essay Neo Plasticisme was dedicated to its ideals. Having read this document Gray established her first contact with the De Stijl architects after she displayed in Amsterdam in 1922. Gray saw their work at the 1923 De Stijl Architecture Exhibition at Léonce Rosenburg’s Galerie l’Effort Moderne. It was to be of seminal importance to her career and ultimately led to friendship with many of the key members of the movement. Mondrian advocated in his publication that ‘It is not enough that form be reduced to its quintessence, that the proportion of the whole work be harmonious; on the contrary, the entire work must be only the plastic expression of relationships and must disappear as particularity’. For Gray’s De Stijl-inspired artworks she set out to create a pure art composed of pure elements where straight lines, angles and bold graphic designs came into play. Gray produced a body of work with asymmetrical, rectangular grids lines of varying widths. In comparison to her earlier work she produced large-scale gouaches playing with various ideas, using different colour schemes or smudging the edges of her compositions. One brown and beige large gouache clearly demonstrates ideas from the De Stijl, however, Gray’s painterly effects are apparent as she uses washes not blocks of colour.80 Another large gouache painted in bold red and pink dating from 1925 consists of pure geometric shapes, its overall design being highly effective.81 It is a second variation of another gouache which Gray had worked on, where she had decided to enlarge the central abstract motif and change the palette.82
3.21 Brown and beige gouache, 1925, paper, paint © NMI
During the 1930s and 1940s Gray created a number of gouaches and artworks that were not informed by any one particular art movement. These included a body of work with a speckled ground in a variety of colours which display her more painterly techniques.83 Many of these have a dark black or green ground with speckled forms that extend inward either horizontally or vertically.84 By mid-1935 to the early 1940s this speckled painterly aspect of Gray’s artwork at times took over the entire picture plane.85 Sometimes the speckled effect took on specific shapes like jigsaws – which are cut-outs mounted on card and then deliberately placed on the gouache.86 Initially the colours and motifs used in the collage elements on such backgrounds were vivid in colour.87 By the mid to late 1940s Gray’s palette became increasingly monochromatic and at times these gouaches were indebted to the artwork of the American Abstract