Artistic rebellion

Vorticism is often referred to as the only British 20th-century art movement of international importance, but the work of the Vorticists — Wyndham Lewis, Edward Wadsworth, Gaudier-Brzeska and their associates — has up to now not been widely known.

Vorticism is often referred to as the only British 20th-century art movement of international importance, but the work of the Vorticists — Wyndham Lewis, Edward Wadsworth, Gaudier-Brzeska and their associates — has up to now not been widely known. However, the Tate’s show has already been seen in Venice at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, making it the first ever Vorticist exhibition in Italy, stronghold of Futurism (Vorticism’s rival), and in America, at the Nasher Museum of Art in North Carolina. Vorticism was last shown in the USA in 1917, so this exhibition is making history in a number of ways. I saw it first in Venice, where it looked compact and dynamic in the small white rooms of the Guggenheim.