'Workshop', Wyndham Lewis

Artwork details

Artist

Wyndham Lewis (1882‑1957)

Title

Workshop

Date c.1914-5

MediumOil paint on canvas

Dimensionssupport: 765 x 610 mm frame: 910 x 760 x 70 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Purchased 1974

Reference

T01931

Not on display

Display caption

Vorticism was a short-lived but radical movement that emerged in London immediately before the First World War. 'The vortex is the point of maximum energy', wrote the American poet Ezra Pound, who co-founded the Vorticist journal Blast with Wyndham Lewis in June 1914. The journal opened with the 'Blast' and 'Bless' manifestos, which celebrate the machine age and Britain as the first industrialised nation. Lewis's painting Workshop epitomises Vorticism's aims, using sharp angles and shifting diagonals to suggest the geometry of modern buildings. Its harsh colours and lines echo the discordant vitality of the modern city in an 'attack on traditional harmony'… (read more)

August 2004