Vorticism was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century, partly inspired by Cubism. The movement was announced in 1914 in the first issue of BLAST, which contained its manifesto and the movement’s rejection of landscape and nudes in favour of a geometric style tending towards abstraction. Ultimately, it was their witnessing of unfolding human disaster in World War I that “drained these artists of their Vorticist zeal”. Vorticism was based in London but was international in make-up and ambition.

An important forerunner of the vorticist movement was the painter Roger Fry, who gave impulses for a reorientation of fine art in Great Britain with the exhibitions Manet and the Post-Impressionists 1910 and Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition of English, French and Russian Artists 1912.

As a result, Italian futurism had considerable influence on the development of vorticism; e.g. B. Percy Wyndham Lewis, one of the central protagonists of vorticism and his home, the Rebel Art Center in London. Wyndham Lewis was one of the first artists to take part in Roger Fry’s Omega Workshops, an artist workshop founded in 1913, but left after a short while in an argument. BLAST, the organ of the avant-garde movement, only appeared in two editions in July 1914 and July 1915th

Vorticism opposed realistic representations in art, denied its moral mandate and insisted on the autonomy of the artwork. On the other hand, the artists of Vorticism saw themselves in contrast to the art of France and as a representative of an original Nordic-English art with a distinctly masculine self-image, which u. a. Hardness postulated as a value. They understood their works as a confrontation with the modern “mechanical” industrial world and remained real models, people and subjects from the big city and industrial production. The sobering war experiences for many artists may have had an impact on the fact that the path from abstraction to the abstract (not figurative) was not completed and vorticism didWorld War I hardly survived.

Origins
The Vorticism group began with the Rebel Art Centre which Wyndham Lewis and others established after disagreeing with Omega Workshops founder Roger Fry, and has roots in the Bloomsbury Group, Cubism and Futurism. Lewis himself saw Vorticism as an independent alternative to Cubism, Futurism and Expressionism.

Vorticism, at first, finds its origin in a dissent from the Bloomsbury Group following a financial disagreement between Roger Fry, creator of Omega Workshops, and Wyndham Lewis, who felt injured during a transaction of objects produced by Omega workshops. But this is not the main reason.

1912
Lewis is a pupil of Bergson, with an anarchist temperament. One of his comrades is TE Hulme, also marked by Bergsonism. The two friends first discovered Cubism, became enthusiastic, then especially Futurism in March 1912 in London during the first English exhibition of Italian painters at the Sackville Gallery; they get carried away, just like a certain press. In October 1912, Roger Fry organized a new exhibition on the theme of the posterity of French post-impressionism: in addition to cubists like Picasso and Braque, he associated Lewis, whose canvases adjoin those of Boccioni.

1913
Then the art critic Frank Rutter (in) organizes an exhibition in October 1913 at the Doré Gallery entitled “Post-Impressionism and Futurism”, and in which the painter Christopher Nevinson participates: for their part, Lewis and Hulme distance themselves with futurism and in particular the theoretical discourse of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who claims to be the sole master of the movement. Nevinson wants to be closer and closer to Marinetti, which deeply annoys Lewis.

1914
This is how, in reaction to certain revolting aspects of futurism and its leader, but also against certain supporters of cubism, in March 1914, in London, at 38 Great Ormond Street, the Rebel Art Center where Lewis is joined by some other personalities, either from Omega Workshops or from the Bloomsbury group, namely Edward Wadsworth, Frederick Etchells (en) and Cuthbert Hamilton。

The name “vorticism” was coined by Ezra Pound in 1913: Pound thus qualifies the productions of Lewis who then recovers this word to qualify the group.

The Rebel Art Center only survived for a few months but launched the movement. Lewis campaigned in favor of Boccioni and his own canvases in 1913 demonstrated a stylistic attachment to this painter whom he deeply admired. The Rebel Art Center is the place of intense activity, there take place exhibitions, conferences and readings of Ezra Pound.

On June 7, 1914, another blow from Marinetti and Nevinson who published a manifesto entitled Vital English Art. Futurist Manifesto, in which they enroll members of the Rebel Art Center without their consent. Then, on June 11, 1914, the same duo published in French a new manifesto Against English art and did the same: the cup is full! On June 12, Marinetti ends his great European tour with a reading-performance at the Rebel Art Center: he reads an extract from his collection, Zang Tumb Tumb, renamed The Battle Of Adrianople, accompanied by Nevinson and Hulme playing percussion (drum, triangle), when Wyndham Lewis, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska andJacob Epstein vociferates against Marinetti who tries at the same time to rally the English group to his movement.

In response to Marinetti, there followed the publication on July 2, 1914 of the first issue of the journal Blast (Explosion), prepared as of June 20, with its pink cover, which contains the manifesto of the ten-point movement, and in which Ezra Pound defines as the review of the Great English Vortex (review of the Great English Vortex) and writes that painting must reject the “facts, ideas, truths” and noted that herself, then takes to Picasso and Marinetti.

1915
A second issue of Blast was released on July 20, 1915, entitled ” War Number “, at the same time as a group exhibition was organized in the premises loaned by the Doré Gallery. In this issue, Lewis recalls that his ideal is peace.

The dissolution of the group is largely the result of the war: while Gaudier-Brzeska died in combat in June 1915, Lewis was mobilized in 1916, Hulme died at the front in 1917, Edward Wadsworth was recruited as a painter of war and camouflage, just like the youngest of the group William Roberts (1895-1980) and David Bomberg, who never really joined vorticism.

The Blast review
The vorticists had their own journal, Blast, edited by Lewis and which published in particular works by Ezra Pound and TS Eliot. Its inventiveness was considered by El Lissitzky as one of the major advances of the graphic design revolution of the 1920s and 1930s.

Influences
The vorticists organized a single major exhibition in the summer of 1915 at the Doré Gallery. Then the movement stopped, largely because of the First World War, and because of public indifference, the cessation of financial support from their patron, the artist Kate Lechmere (1887-1976) and the ” begins a return to traditional pictorial methods. Attempts to revive the movement in the 1920s, under the name of ” Group X “, came to a halt.

Although Lewis is generally regarded as the central figure of the movement, it has been suggested that this was more due to his contacts and his ability to self-advertise and to controversy than to the quality of his work. In 1956, an exhibition at the Tate Gallery, “Wyndham Lewis and the Vorticists,” highlighted his pre-eminent place in the movement, which greatly irritated a few other surviving members of the group. Both David Bomberg and William Roberts protested strongly about Lewis’ catalog assertion that vorticism was, in fact, what I said and did at a certain time.

Demise and legacy
Experimental paintings and sculpture using angular simplification and abstraction, by Lewis, Wadsworth, Shakespear and others, were shown at the Rebel Art Centre in 1914, before the formation of the Vorticist Group. This work was contemporary with and comparable to abstraction by European artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, František Kupka and the Russian Rayist Group. The Vorticists held only one exhibition, in 1915, at the Doré Gallery in London. The main section of the exhibition included work by Jessica Dismorr, Frederick Etchells, Lewis, Gaudier-Brzeska, William Roberts, Helen Saunders and Edward Wadsworth. There was a smaller section area titled “Those Invited To Show” that included several other artists. Jacob Epstein was notably not represented, although did have his drawings reproduced in BLAST.

After this, the movement broke up, largely due to the onset of World War I and public apathy towards the work. Gaudier-Brzeska was killed in military service, while leading figures such as Epstein distanced themselves stylistically from Lewis. A brief attempt by Lewis to revive the movement in 1920 under the name Group X proved unsuccessful. Pound, however, through his correspondence with Lewis, was understood to hold a commitment to the goals of the movement as much as forty years after its demise.

While Lewis is generally seen as the central figure in the movement, it has been suggested that this was more due to his contacts and ability as a self-publicist and polemicist than the quality of his works. A 1956 exhibition at the Tate Gallery was called Wyndham Lewis and Vorticism, highlighting his prominent place in the movement. This angered other members of the group. Bomberg and Roberts (who published a series of “Vortex Pamphlets” on the matter) both protested strongly the assertion of Lewis, which was printed in the exhibition catalogue: “Vorticism, in fact, was what I, personally, did, and said, at a certain period.”

Members and assimilated
The group includes painters, sculptors, photographers, poets and theorists. There are four women painters: Kate Lechmere, journalist, Dorothy Shakespear, wife of Pound, and finally Jessica Dismorr and Helen Saunders, partly forgotten after 1920.

The influence of the poet and theorist TE Hulme (1883-1917) is significant, he was the companion of Kate Lechmere, and was mobilized in August 1914.

The eleven signatories of the Vorticist manifesto were:

Richard Aldington
Malcolm Arbuthnot
Lawrence Atkinson
Jessica Dismorr
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Cuthbert Hamilton
Wyndham Lewis
Ezra Pound
William Roberts
Helen Saunders
Edward Wadsworth
Other contributors to the development of the movement were David Bomberg, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Jacob Epstein (notably Rock Drill), Frederick Etchells, Christopher Nevinson and Dorothy Shakespear.