Vorticism

Vorticism was a British avant-garde group formed in London in 1914 with the aim of creating art that expressed the dynamism of the modern world, the energy of machines, the city and speed. The movement arose at the crossroads of Cubism and Futurism but sought its own sharp, geometricised style with hard lines, angles and machine-like forms. Its intellectual leader was the writer and painter Wyndham Lewis, and the name was proposed by the poet Ezra Pound, alluding to the vortex as a point of maximum creative energy. The group published the magazine Blast and included artists such as Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Edward Wadsworth. Vorticism was short-lived: the First World War scattered its members, and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was killed at the front in 1915. Despite its brevity, the movement was arguably the only distinctive British contribution to international early modernism and left a notable mark on the history of the European avant-garde in the first third of the twentieth century.