{"title":"Wyndham Lewis","description":"\u003cp\u003eWyndham Lewis (1882-1957) was a British painter, novelist and critic, born in Nova Scotia, and the leading figure of Vorticism, the hard-edged movement that brought machine-age abstraction to London on the eve of the First World War. In 1914 he launched \u003cem\u003eBLAST\u003c\/em\u003e, an oversized pink magazine whose manifesto blasted the whole Victorian age and blessed the humble hairdresser. The poet Ezra Pound gave the movement its name, and the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and the printmaker Edward Wadsworth signed its manifesto. Lewis went on to write the novel \u003cem\u003eTarr\u003c\/em\u003e and to paint portraits of T. S. Eliot and Edith Sitwell. Explore more \u003ca href=\"\/collections\/british-art\"\u003eBritish art\u003c\/a\u003e posters.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"percy-wyndham-lewis-composition-in-red-and-mauve-1915-vorticist-art-print","title":"Percy Wyndham Lewis Composition in Red and Mauve, 1915 – Vorticist Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eComposition in Red and Mauve\u003c\/em\u003e (1915) is one of the small group of paintings produced during the brief working life of Vorticism, the British avant-garde movement Percy Wyndham Lewis co-founded in 1914 and led until the First World War effectively ended it. The composition stages a collision of sharp diagonals, mechanical-feeling planes, and dissonant colour pairings — the visual vocabulary Lewis developed in opposition to what he saw as the soft pastoralism of contemporary English painting.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVorticism took its name from Ezra Pound's notion of the vortex: a point of concentrated energy through which ideas pass. Its principal vehicle was \u003cem\u003eBLAST\u003c\/em\u003e, the journal Lewis edited and largely designed, whose typography — enormous black sans-serif headlines on bright pink paper — was as much a part of the movement's identity as any of its paintings. The contributors included Pound, T. S. Eliot, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Edward Wadsworth, and Jessica Dismorr. The movement formally lasted from 1914 to 1915, derailed by the war, but its visual influence on later British abstraction was substantial.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLewis himself was less a specialist than a sustained multi-disciplinary career: novelist (\u003cem\u003eTarr\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Childermass\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Apes of God\u003c\/em\u003e), portraitist (his sitters included Eliot, Edith Sitwell, and Naomi Mitchison), magazine editor, polemicist, and critic. The paintings of 1914–1915 are the sharpest visual record of a moment when British modernism briefly produced a distinctive native idiom rather than importing one from Paris.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch6\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e \u003cspan style=\"color: #000000;\"\u003ePoster design Copyright © 2025 Art Poster Archive. All Rights Reserved.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/h6\u003e","brand":"artposterarchive","offers":[{"title":"A3 (11.7 x 16.5 ins)","offer_id":55284556857730,"sku":"APA-LEWIS-REDMAUVE","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A2 (16.5 x 23.4 ins)","offer_id":55284556890498,"sku":"APA-LEWIS-REDMAUVE","price":38.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A1 (23.4 x 33.1 ins)","offer_id":55284556923266,"sku":"APA-LEWIS-REDMAUVE","price":56.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"18 x 24 ins (45 x 60 cm)","offer_id":55284556956034,"sku":"APA-LEWIS-REDMAUVE","price":38.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"24 x 36 ins (60 x 90 cm)","offer_id":55284556988802,"sku":"APA-LEWIS-REDMAUVE","price":56.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0563\/5260\/4323\/files\/APAMAINPortraitBlankfixed_e498c0f3-c50a-4a6e-af1d-eddad3cfee35.jpg?v=1753391748"},{"product_id":"wyndham-lewis-blast-1914-magazine-cover-exhibition-poster","title":"Wyndham Lewis 'BLAST' 1914 Magazine Cover Exhibition Poster","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe cover of \u003cem\u003eBLAST\u003c\/em\u003e no. 1, the 1914 magazine that introduced Vorticism to London: one word in heavy black capitals, driven diagonally across a field of hot pink. Wyndham Lewis edited it and wrote most of it, and it reached readers on 2 July 1914, a few weeks before Britain went to war.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eInside, the type was as loud as the cover. The Vorticist manifesto, written by Lewis with help from Ezra Pound, sorted the world into things to BLAST and things to BLESS. The first target, \"from politeness\", was England itself, followed by the whole Victorian age (\"BLAST years 1837 to 1900\"). The blessings went to the great ports and to the hairdresser, who \"attacks Mother Nature for a small fee\". Italian Futurism was waved away in four words: \"AUTOMOBILISM (Marinetteism) bores us.\" The same issue carried Rebecca West's first published story and the opening chapter of what became Ford Madox Hueffer's \u003cem\u003eThe Good Soldier\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTen years later Pound wrote to Lewis that he had just taken out his copy of the \"great MAGENTA cover'd opusculus\". The poster keeps everything Lewis put on that cover, the slant, the chunky letterforms and the worn pink, with one small line of art gallery exhibition type beneath. It reads from across a room, and anyone who knows of it will recognise it at once.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"artposterarchive","offers":[{"title":"A3 (11.7 x 16.5 ins)","offer_id":57035208524162,"sku":"APA-LEWIS-BLAST","price":24.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A2 (16.5 x 23.4 ins)","offer_id":57035208556930,"sku":"APA-LEWIS-BLAST","price":38.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"18 x 24 ins (45 x 60 cm)","offer_id":57035208589698,"sku":"APA-LEWIS-BLAST","price":38.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A1 (23.4 x 33.1 ins)","offer_id":57035208622466,"sku":"APA-LEWIS-BLAST","price":56.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"24 x 36 ins (60 x 90 cm)","offer_id":57035208655234,"sku":"APA-LEWIS-BLAST","price":56.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0563\/5260\/4323\/files\/Exhibition-Poster-001_6685944d-92dc-4b62-8687-c45e50e0c5f0.jpg?v=1794599592"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0563\/5260\/4323\/collections\/APAMAINPortraitBlankfixed_e498c0f3-c50a-4a6e-af1d-eddad3cfee35.jpg?v=1794598787","url":"https:\/\/artposterarchive.com\/collections\/wyndham-lewis.oembed","provider":"artposterarchive","version":"1.0","type":"link"}