Tate British Artists: Wyndham Lewis

Description

Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957), the self-styled 'Enemy', was arguably the most significant British artist-writer of the twentieth century. As well as creating a unique oeuvre of paintings and drawings, he wrote short stories, novels, essays and books on philosophy, literature, politics and cultural criticism. A draughtsman of exceptional skill and verve, he also pioneered cutting-edge modernism in Britain before the First World War, leading the Vorticist movement and editing its typographically startling journal Blast. Lewis, along wth figures including poet Ezra Pound and sculptor Gaudier-Brzeska, turned London into an international 'vortex' of creative activity. His cultural revolution was brought to a halt by the First World War, in which he served as an artillery officer and as a major official war artist. In the twenties and thirties Lewis's output showed an astonishing variety of creative and critical responses to international modernism, while his ideas about politics and culture challenged the liberal consensus of his contemporaries. His ill-judged flirtation with fascist ideology made him a highly controversial figure, yet he had, and has, admirers across the political and arti

Richard Humphreys is Senior Curator of Programme Research at Tate and the author of The Tate Britain Companion to British Art and Futurism in the Movements in Modern Art series.