Percy Wyndham Lewis

Helen Saunders
Sale, Sotheby's London, 6th October 1993, lot 118, where acquired by David Bowie

London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Speed: Visions of an Accelerated Age, 11th September - 22nd November 1988, un-numbered catalogue, illustrated p.108;
London, Austin/Desmond Fine Art, Wyndham Lewis, 1882-1957, 1990, cat. no.7, illustrated p.21; 
London, Olympia, Wyndham Lewis: an Exhibition within the Fine Art, Design & Antiques Fair, 1st - 6th March 2005, un-numbered catalogue (WL-051);
Madrid, Fundación Juan March, Wyndham Lewis, 1882-1957, 5th February - 16th May 2010, cat. no.26, illustrated p.124.

Walter Michel, Wyndham Lewis, Paintings and Drawings, Thames & Hudson, London, 1971, p.352, no.67, illustrated pl.21.

Not examined out of the frame. The sheet appears to be laid down onto a backing card, at least around the edges. The sheet undulates slightly in places, but otherwise appears sound. There is evidence of several possible old repairs to the sheet, at each of the corners and at the centre of each of the upper and lower edges. There are one or two very slight creases and some minor wear apparent at each of the upper and lower left corners. There is a slight possible surface scuff in the lower centre of the sheet. There may be some slight fading to the pigments and discolouration to the sheet. Subject to the above, the work appears to be in good overall condition. The work is floated within a window mount and presented in a painted wooden frame, held under glass. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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Impresario, polemicist, publisher, writer, painter – Wyndham Lewis is a cult figure in British art and culture of the early 20th century. A perpetual outsider, he brought the passion and fury of Italian Futurism to Britain, combining its obsession with speed and movement with Cubism’s deconstruction of pictorial space, creating his ‘vortex’, the still eye at the centre of the storm of Modernity.

Futurist Figure, with its Cubist faceting of a body set in a stark Futurist setting, taps into themes which in 1912 Wyndham Lewis was in the midst of developing. Having spent eight years on the continent, immersing himself in the world of the intelligentsia and befriending Modigliani, Derain, and Gertrude Stein, he returned to England in 1909 well versed in the intellectual and artistic trends of the continent. Having been slightly late to wake up to artistic modernity, London was becoming a hub of the European avant-garde, attracting the likes of Jacob Epstein and Ezra Pound, and holding provocative exhibitions such as Roger Fry’s Manet and the Post-Impressionists in 1910 and his Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1912 (to which Lewis contributed). In March of 1912 the Futurists exploded onto the London scene with an exhibition at the Sackville Gallery. The Italians, and Marinetti in particular, had a major impact on Lewis and his young rebellious artistic associates, not only in terms of their focus on the dynamism of the machine age, but also as a catalyst for an analysis of the Brit’s own theoretical direction.  

These percolating theories found their voice in the publication of Blast No. 1 in the summer of 1914. A manifesto edited and partially written by Lewis, the publication was a call to rekindle the creative fires of Britain, and announced the arrival of the new English Art movement - Vorticism. The manifesto sought to distinguish Vorticism from its European counterparts in terms of ideology, claiming that it ‘showed itself more resolute in its exclusion of the past than the Paris School, less concerned with its glittering jazzed-up spectacle of the megalopolis than the Italians, and much more distant from architecture than the Dutch (such as Mondrian).’ (Wyndham Lewis, Wyndham Lewis the Artist, from ‘Blast’ to Burlington House, London, Laidlow and Laidlow, 1939, quoted in Wyndham Lewis (exh. cat.), Lund Humphries, London, 1980, p.18). One of the most creative and rebellious movements in British art history, Vorticism burned brightly but briefly, its momentum extinguished by the ravaging effects of the First World War. Lewis, as arguably its chief architect, had by that point solidified his position as a renowned figure in British art of the 20th century.