Edward Wadsworth was a major figure in British art of the first half of the
twentieth century. Edward Wadsworth was a painter of marines, marine
still-life, landscapes and abstracts in tempera paints. He was also a
draughtsman, muralist and wood engraver. A number of his mural
decorations were for the ocean liner "Queen Mary". Edward Wadsworth is
most famous for his close association with Vorticism and copying the
styles of
Pablo Picasso.
Edward Wadsworth was raised in a northern industrial environment that
was to appear with great forcefulness in his Vorticist work. Like many
other Vorticists, Wadsworth's interest in the machine showed itself at
an early age. Under the impact of the Post-Impressionists, he turned for
a while to portraiture, beach scenes and still-life's.
Edward Wadsworth's painting " The Beached Margin" (shown above) displays
nautical objects assembled in bold relief against a marine background of
of sea and sand. Using the difficult medium of egg tempera, which Edward
Wadsworth mixed himself he is able to show amazing detail. The painting
comes close to
Surrealism in it's style and clarity. These
imaginative geometric creations offer up an intellectual pleasure beyond
that of a simple still life painting.
Edward
Wadsworth exhibited first with the NEAC in 1911, becoming a member in
1921, and the Friday Club from 1912-1913. In 1913 Wadsworth's work
appeared in the second
Post-Impressionist Exhibition and
he joined the Omega Workshops. When Wyndham Lewis broke from the Omega,
Wadsworth followed him and subsequently showed in the Post-Impressionist
and
Futurist exhibition, Dore Galleries.
In June of 1914, Edward Wadsworth was in a group of artists, including
Lewis, who jeered Marinetti's public performance of "The Battle Of
Adrianople". Edward Wadsworth was a signatory of the Vorticist Manifesto
published in BLAST the next month, and also supplied a review of
Wassily Kandinsky's "Concerning The
Spiritual In Art" and images to be reproduced in the magazine.
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