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ARTS AND HUMANITIES

WYNDHAM LEWIS PORTRAITS

Prof. Paul Edwards

Monday 16 June 2008 at 7.30pm

Painter and writer Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) is best known for leading the Vorticist movement (sometimes called the ‘English Cubism’) and editing the two issues of the movement's avant-garde magazine, Blast. His aggressive personality (and qualified support for Hitler) made him controversial, as his did his work - Walter Sickert called him 'the greatest portraitist of this or any other time', but his 1938 portrait of T.S. Eliot was rejected by the Royal Academy Hanging Committee, causing Augustus John to resign in protest.

The National Portrait Gallery is staging a major exhibition of Lewis’s work from July 3rd to October 19th. On Monday 17th June its curator Paul Edwards, Professor of English and History of Art at Bath Spa University, will give a talk on the artist and exhibition at the BRLSI.