Vorticism was a London-based modernist art movement formed in 1914 by the writer and artist Wyndham Lewis. The movement was partially inspired by Cubism and was introduced to the public by means of the publication of the Vorticist manifesto in Blast magazine. Familiar forms of representational art were rejected in favour of a geometric style that tended towards a hard-edged abstraction. Lewis proved unable to harness the talents of his disparate group of avant-garde artists; however, for a brief period Vorticism proved to be an exciting intervention and an artistic riposte to Marinetti's Futurism and the Post-Impressionism of Roger Fry's Omega Workshops.
Nina Hamnett was a Welsh artist and writer, and an expert on sailors' shanties, who became known as the Queen of Bohemia.
Harold Stanley Ede, also known as Jim Ede and H. S. Ede, was a British curator, collector of art and friend to artists. He was the creator of Kettle's Yard in Cambridge.
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French artist and sculptor who developed a rough-hewn, primitive style of direct carving.
John Rodker was an English writer, modernist poet, and publisher of modernist writers.
Ida Margaret Nettleship was a British artist who is best known as the first wife of artist Augustus John.
Savage Messiah is a 1972 British biographical drama film of the life of French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, made by Russ-Arts and distributed by MGM. It was directed and produced by Ken Russell, with Harry Benn as associate producer, from a screenplay by Christopher Logue, based on the 1931 book Savage Messiah by H. S. Ede. Much of the content of Ede's book came from letters sent between Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and his lover Sophie Brzeska.
Alfred AaronWolmark was a painter and decorative artist. He was a Post Impressionist and a pioneer of the New Movement in Art.
John Currie was an English painter and murderer. Born in Staffordshire, the illegitimate son of an Ulster-Scottish father who was a 'navvy' working on the railways and an English mother, he worked as an artist in the Potteries, painting ceramics, before going to the Royal College of Art in 1905, and later becoming Master of Life Painting at Bristol. He married in 1907. In the summer of 1910 he briefly attended the Slade School of Art, where he joined the 'Neo-Primitive' group that included fellow Slade students Mark Gertler, C.R.W. Nevinson, Edward Wadsworth, Stanley Spencer and Adrian Allinson. The contemporary art collector Michael Sadleir described him as 'blazing with genius'; others likened him to a character in a Dostoevsky novel.
Fernande Olivier was a French artist and model known primarily for having been the model and first muse of painter Pablo Picasso, and for her written accounts of her relationship with him. Picasso painted over 60 portraits of Olivier.
Sophia Margaret "Sophie" Gray, later Sophia Margaret Caird, was a Scottish model for her brother-in-law, the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais. She was a younger sister of Euphemia "Effie" Gray, who married Millais in 1855 after the annulment of her marriage to John Ruskin. The spelling of her name was, after around 1861, sometimes "Sophy," but only within the family. In public she was known as Sophie and later in life, after her marriage, as Sophia.
Laura Oldfield Ford, also known as Laura Grace Ford, is a British artist and author. Her mixed media and multimedia work, encompassing psychogeography, poetry and prose, photography, ballpoint pen, acrylic paint and spray paint, explores political themes and focuses on British urban areas. Her zine Savage Messiah, which centres on London, was published from 2005 to 2009 and collected as a book in 2011.
Kate Elizabeth Lechmere was a British painter who with Wyndham Lewis was the co-founder of the Rebel Art Centre in 1914. As far as is known, none of Lechmere's paintings have survived. She served as a nurse in England during the First World War and had a three-year relationship with the poet and critic T.E. Hulme before he was killed. After the war she became a successful milliner.
Ethel (Dolly) Kibblewhite (1873–1947) was the host of an important artistic and literary salon in London in the 1910s. The salon was held at her home at 67 Frith Street and presided over by the poet and critic T.E. Hulme.
Horace Ascher Brodzky was an Australian-born artist and writer most of whose work was created in London and New York. His work included paintings, drawings and linocuts, of which he was an early pioneer. An associate in his early career of many leading artists working in the Britain of his period, including Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Mark Gertler, and members of the Vorticism movement, he ended his life relatively neglected.
Anne Lavinia Cameron Banks, also known as Dot Banks and by the male pseudonym Georges Banks, was a Scottish writer and artist affiliated with avant-garde circles such as the Rhythm Group at the start of the 20th century.
Haldane MacFall was a British Army officer who became an authoritative art critic, the author of several works of art history, an essayist and a novelist. He illustrated many of his own works, as well as bookplates and cover art for others, and exhibited at the Royal Academy.
Evelyn Ann Silber is an English art historian and an acknowledged specialist on 20th century British sculpture. She is an honorary Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow and is researching the marketing of modernist art in early 20th century London and the role played by dealers. Having moved to Glasgow in 2001 to assume the role of Director of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Silber continues to be based there and is an advocate for Glasgow’s cultural heritage, the conservation of the city, and its tourist industry. She is currently the Chair of the Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel.
Una Flett was an author, journalist, travel writer, artist and in her youth, a ballerina with the Ballet des Champs-Élysées, Paris. Her memoirs and novel touched on life in the 1930s to 1950s, and her play Zosienka explored the life of artist Henri Guadier-Brzeska.
Robin Richmond RWS is a London-based British-American painter, writer, critic, teacher and illustrator, regularly exhibiting her art in the UK and France. She is the author of five books on art and has illustrated three children's books. She is a leading colourist and painter of abstract landscapes. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Watercolour Society in 2022. She is the author of an art blog.
