Gray kept the catalogue which contained a joint statement in French by the artists: Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916), Carlo Carrà (1881-1966), Luigi Russolo (1881-1947), Giacomo Balla (1871-1958) and Gino Severini (1883-1966).64 It also contained a copy of the Futurist manifesto. The group advocated modernism. Their ideas were controversial, extolling war as the only hygiene of the world. They revelled in technology, a similarity evident with Gray. Dynamism, motion, movement and speed were all an incantatory formula for the Futurists which led to Marinetti’s proverbial saying that a racing car was more beautiful than the Nike of Samothrace.
3.17 Charcoal drawing, circa 1920, paper, pencil © NMI
From the moment that Gray saw the exhibition at the Galerie Bernheim Jeune she adopted their ideas. A charcoal and pencil drawing which Gray did shows a Futurist-style landscape with roads and crossroads and abstract forms.65 In 1912 Gray had also visited America with her sister Thora, and two friends Gaby Bloch and Florence Gardiner (1878-1963). Gray was fascinated by New York, especially the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan. The Futurists adored the industrial city with its skyscrapers and tunnels, advocating that new cities be built as the old were torn down. Gray was impressed with their ideas on modernity and machinery.
The success of the new art movements and the successful reign of internationalism in the Paris arts was also in part due to the powerful xenophilism of the upper middle classes and of the enlightened aristocracy. The presence of such large numbers of foreign artists transformed the art scene in Paris by serving to increase the gap between the official art and independent art (represented by the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Indépendants). These foreign artists were to contribute enormously to the emergence in France of the avant-garde art movement.
With the developments of Fauvism, Cubism and Futurism, abstraction became a prominent issue for many artists and theorists, who were influenced by the writings of Wassily Kandinsky’s (1866-1944) essay On the Spiritual in Art, 1910. Extracts were published in 1914 in Percy Wyndham Lewis’s periodical Blast of which Gray owned a copy.66 His writings and ideas spread rapidly throughout art circles promoting concepts of pure art, total abstraction and the rejection of subject matter. Gray’s development into pure abstraction began a move from figurative, seen in her early lacquer screens and panels which she produced for Jacques Doucet, to pure abstract, such as her interiors completed for Mme Mathieu-Lévy and her total abstract carpet designs of the early 1920s. All throughout linear graphics were a constant. Initially Gray began using large swirling lines, which gradually progressed into sweeping thin sharp lines, inspired by Futurism and the work of Giacomo Balla. Her work then displayed thin curling lines inspired by Paul Klee (1879-1940) which finally evolved into the use of more rigid geometric thin lines and forms. One gouache in black, grey and beige is a perfect example of these swirling geometric lines.67 Another black and white speckled gouache contains a sweeping lightning bolt motif which runs from top to bottom and is similar 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
