This spring, M HKA will devote a focused archive presentation to the work of little-known British avant-garde artist Marlow Moss (1889-1958). Moss was not only radical in her art practice – that inspired her more famous colleague Mondriaan. With her fluid identity and idiosyncratic way of life, she also has a voice in the current gender debate.

The presentation will be mainly based on Compositie met dubbele lijn en blauw vlak [Composition with Double Line and Blue Plane] from 1934, and some very special, never before exhibited sketches, watercolours, calculations and documentary material in possession of Andreas Oosthoek, the so-called 'zaakwaarnemer' [agent] and treasurer of both the Moss estate and the Nijhoff family.

Writer and poet Andreas Oosthoek still lives in the house that the Nijhof family had built in the 1930s, and where the Dutch writer Netty Nijhoff stayed with his life partner Marlow Moss. Here, he still keeps special material, knowledge and stories from, and about, Moss. Together with Dutch filmmaker Fifi Visser, the M HKA made a documentary about the tangible traces that Marlow Moss left in the Dutch province of Zeeland and its surrounding area, on the basis of some interviews and testimonies. The documentary Wrakhout. De koffer van Marlow Moss [Driftwood. Marlow Moss’s Suitcase] enhances the M HKA presentation with an extensive context and qualitative depth. The film is an integral part of the expo, but will of course also be shown in art-house 'De Cinema'.

Artists: Marlow Moss