Russian Ballet (book) - Vorticism and The English Avant-garde

Vorticism and The English Avant-garde

Bomberg had been expelled from the Slade art school in 1913 due to his modernist leanings, and after a brief flirtation with Futurism, had put on a major one man exhibition of Abstract art at the Chenil Gallery, Chelsea, July 1914. The exhibition included paintings such as The Mud Bath and Ju-Jitsu. The show was enthusiastically reviewed by TE Hulme. Visited by Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Brâncuşi and Marinetti amongst others the exhibition earned 'him the admiration of many experimental artists both in London and abroad'

The foreword of the Chenil Gallery catalogue, 1914, contained a defiant text not dissimilar to Wyndham Lewis' Manifesto in BLAST 1, and one that could just as easily apply to the drawings done around this time that would serve as the basis of Russian Ballet;

'I appeal to the Sense of Form. In some of the work I show in the first room, I completely abandon Naturalism and Tradition. I am searching for an Intenser expression. In other work in this room, where I use naturalistic Form, I have stripped it of all irrelevant matter. I look upon nature, while I live in a steel city. Where decoration happens, it is accidental. My object is the construction of Pure Form. I reject everything in painting that is not Pure Form. I hate the colours of the East, the Modern Mediævalist, and the Fat Man of the Renaissance.' David Bomberg, 1914

Whilst usually considered a vorticist, Bomberg had refused to sign the Vorticist manifesto published in BLAST, July 1914, or allow Lewis to reproduce his work in the magazine alongside contributions from TS Eliot, Ezra Pound, Edward Wadsworth, Ford Maddox Ford and Jacob Epstein, amongst others. The only official connection was when he agreed to exhibit with the Vorticists at their single English exhibition at the Doré Gallery, London, July 1915. His work was placed in a separate room as part of the 'invited to show' section.