Avant-Garde Artist Marlow Moss Heads New Solo Retrospective at Ward Moretti

‘I destroyed my old personality and created a new one’

The words of Marlow Moss, avant-garde pioneer, whose work is the subject of a commercial gallery show – Marlow Moss: Space, Movement & Light – at Ward Moretti, 12 Duke Street, St James’s.

It’s the first commercial show of the artist’s work in half a century, and is part of an ongoing effort to afford the artist their rightful place in the canon. The past decade has seen a rush on museums adding their works to their permanent collections, as well as auction prices steadily increasing. ‘White, Yellow and Black’ (1953) was sold at Sotheby’s for £1.1m in June 2026 (more than doubling its value from just a year ago). ‘White, Yellow and Black’ is included – on loan – in the Ward Moretti show.

Moss – who was non-binary – was a close affiliate of Piet Mondrian, who was widely considered to have influenced Moss, though recent discoveries have shown that the influence in the relationship worked both ways.

Emma Ward, the co-founder of Ward Moretti and curator of the show, says ‘I’ve really chosen one of the hardest topics to do as a subject for a show because her output was so small, she didn’t do more than about 65 or 70 paintings over her whole life. Of those, maybe about a third have been destroyed or disappeared, and a third are in museums.’

Marlow Moss: Space, Movement & Light is running at Ward Moretti until October 30th.