Page 35 - Studio International - April 1967

Fig. 1
Edward Wadsworth
Dux et Comes 1933
Tempera, signed and dated
lower right
14¾ x 20½ in.
Marlborough Fine Art.
A veteran of Vorticism and
the X Group, in the mid-'20s
Wadsworth was painting
marine still lifes under the
influence of Chirico. In a
series of works painted in
1929-30 he used some of the
same range of S.L. objects-
jack-knives, revolvers and
set squares-to create
abstracted patterns. In
1932-3 he painted a series
of pure abstract
compositions, most of them
based on the relationship
between two related forms
or sets of forms (the Dux et
Comes series). In some of the
last of these abstract
compositions Wadsworth
experimented with more
expressionistic, more
gestural forms, though
without departing from the
hard-edged tempera style
which he had used since the
early '20s. The combination
of free form and tight
surface gives Wadsworth's
abstract works a curiously
dry and unrealized quality
(cf. Fig. 16).

Impressionist Exhibition: 'These artists do not seek to painters illustrated in the first of its annual Cahiers in
imitate form, but to create form, not to imitate life but to 1932 (the others were Evie Hone, a pupil of Gleizes, and
find an equivalent for life ... in fact they aim not at J. W. Power). The Association was founded to promote
illusion but at reality. The logical extreme of such a 'non-figuration, c'est a dire culture de la plastique pure,
method would undoubtedly be the attempt to give up all a l'exclusion de tout element explicatif, anecdotique,
resemblance to natural form, and to create a purely litteraire, naturaliste, etc.' It was extremely international
abstract language of form—a visual music.' Nash added, and claimed to include only artists whose entire work was
`Since those (1912) days painting has taken two routes: abstract at that time. The two chief elements in the
the broad main way of Post-Impressionism, and the Association were composed of those like Gleizes and
narrower path of discovery towards a purely abstract Herbin who had pushed certain decorative tendencies in
language of form.' Nash gave Edward Wadsworth as an late cubism to the point of abstraction, and those who
example of a painter working in the latter direction. were practitioners and theorist of abstraction as a
At the time he was writing Wadsworth was painting beginning and end in itself. The latter group included
compositions in which the forms were wholly non- Mondrian, Gabo, Van Doesburg, Vantongerloo, Moholy-
figurative. (Fig 1.) Like Nash, he had been strongly influ- Nagy, and later Max Bill (1933), Josef Albers, Cesar
enced by Chirico in the '20s and although, as the influence Domela (1934) and Kandinsky (1935). Members at one
of Leger and the Purists recalled his early training as an time or another included Arp, Hélion, Calder, R. Delaunay,
engineer, his still life forms became progressively more Kupka, Schwitters (1932), Brancusi and Erni (1934).
mechanistic, less literary and less nostalgic, form retained In 1932 Wadsworth must have seemed to most English
a largely emotive function in his compositions. (Fig 16.) eyes, as he did to Nash's, like a grass-roots abstract
The forms of his 'English Metaphysical' still lifes, serene painter, and for the short time in which he was working
and hard-edged as they were, had been instinct with per- in a wholly abstract vein he certainly wrote like one: 'A
sonality and expression, and this was no less true of his picture is no longer a window out of which one sees an
abstract forms. Wadsworth had contributed translations attractive little bit of Nature : nor is it a means of demon-
of Kandinsky's 'Uber das Geistige in der Kunst' to 'Blast' strating the personal sentiments of the artist; it is itself,
No.1 in 1914 and Kandinsky's concept of art as an emotive it is an object: a new unity expanding the idea of the
visual music underlies Wadsworth's attitude to abstrac- term "Beauty".' (From a statement in Unit 1 1934.)
tion in the early thirties. The Association Abstraction- His real inclinations lay, however, much more with the
Creation had been founded in Paris in 1931 and Wads- post-cubist group and with the 'tough-minded' cubists—
worth, who for an English artist had unusually strong Leger, Ozenfant, Metzinger, Lhote—by whom he had
contacts with the Continent, was one of the few English been influenced earlier. In 1934 he abandoned abstrac-