The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914–18

This is the first exhibition devoted to Vorticism to be presented in Italy. An abstracted figurative style, combining machine-age forms and the focused energy suggested by a vortex, Vorticism was a short-lived, but pivotal modernist movement that emerged in London and roughly spanned the years of World War I. Vorticism’s leaders were painter and writer Wyndham Lewis and poet Ezra Pound. Their mouthpiece was the radical avant-garde magazine Blast. Although Vorticism was born in London, several members were American, including sculptor Jacob Epstein and photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn, as well as the important patron, John Quinn. The exhibition emphasizes the group’s Anglo-American connections and is built around the recreation of the three exhibitions the Vorticists mounted during the 1910s; research on these has led to the discovery of lost works and previously unknown material on the movement. Featuring approximately 100 works, comprising paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photography, and printed matter, The Vorticists is coorganized by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; and Tate Britain, London.