Vorticism

Vorticism was a London-based modernist movement formed in 1914 by the writer and painter Wyndham Lewis, and announced to the public through the Vorticist manifesto in his magazine BLAST. Partly inspired by Cubism and pitched against Marinetti's Futurism and Roger Fry's Omega Workshops, it rejected familiar representational art in favor of a hard-edged geometric style tending toward abstraction. Vorticist paintings present modern life as bold lines and harsh colors pulling the eye to the center of the canvas - the vortex of energy that gives the movement its name - while its sculpture builds intensity through direct carving. The group was disparate and short-lived, but it was Britain's sharpest avant-garde intervention before the First World War cut it short, and member Edward Wadsworth later applied its machine-age graphics to wartime dazzle camouflage.

Defining characteristics

• Hard-edged geometric abstraction rejecting familiar representational forms
• Bold, harsh lines and colors that draw the eye into a central 'vortex'
• Machine-age imagery: pistons, wheels, factory forms and armored geometry
• Jarring diagonal compositions and zigzag rhythms suggesting violent energy
• Sculpture made by 'direct carving', building intensity through the block itself

Key figures

• Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) — Writer-painter who founded the movement and edited BLAST
• Ezra Pound (1885-1972) — Poet who named the vortex and shaped the movement's literary side
• Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915) — Sculptor whose direct-carved figures embody Vorticist energy
• Edward Wadsworth (1889-1949) — Painter of machine-age dockyard and ship subjects
• Jessica Dismorr (1885-1939) — Painter and poet among the movement's core exhibitors

Example works

• BLAST (No. 1) — Wyndham Lewis (editor) (1914)
• Red Stone Dancer — Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (c. 1913)
• Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool — Edward Wadsworth (1919)

Sources

• Vorticism - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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