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From the early years in London, flush with a new awareness of post-impressionism, to later work made at Charleston, the 'Bloomsbury' cultural milieu blazed a trail in British art. Working on both fine art projects and decorative schemes, this loose-knit group emerged as consistently imaginative practitioners. While demonstrably indebted to the European Avant Garde, their art was far from derivative. This presentation focuses on four artists whose work related to the Bloomsbury network, and whose vitality and variety has secured them a place in the history of British modernism.
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Duncan Grant
1885 - 1978Duncan grant was introduced to the Bloomsbury group by his cousin, the writer Lytton Strachey. After working for the omega workshops when it opened in 1913, grant moved to Charleston farmhouse in 1916 with his artistic and lifelong companion, vanessa bell. The unique creative relationship which Bell and Grant shared from their early post-impressionist years was a constant inspiration in his work.
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Mark Gertler
1891 - 1939In 1908, Mark Gertler enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. During his four years there, he was a contemporary of Paul Nash, Edward Wadsworth, C. R. W. Nevinson, Stanley Spencer and Isaac Rosenberg among others. In this time, Gertler met the painter Dora Carrington whose affections he pursued relentlessly for many years. Much of his working life was spent in London and he was introduced to the Bloomsbury group by his patron Lady Ottoline Morrell. In 1911, he exhibited at the Friday Club, of which Vanessa Bell was the secretary and founder, and his work was admired for a time by Bell’s sister, the novelist Virginia Woolf. Gertler became acquainted with the art critic Roger Fry in the mid-1910s, and it was with Fry’s encouragement that Gertler began to take inspiration from Paul Cézanne.
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Vanessa Bell
1879 - 1961Following the death of her parents, Vanessa Stephen and her siblings moved from their family home to Gordon square in Bloomsbury, where regular meetings with other artists and intellectuals led to the formation of the Bloomsbury group. She founded an exhibiting group, the Friday cCub, in 1906, and was also a member of the New English Art Club. In 1907, she married another Bloomsbury associate, Clive Bell, with whom she had two children. Despite this, she lived openly in a committed relationship with Duncan Grant at their home, Charleston, in Sussex from 1916 onwards.
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Quentin Bell
1910 - 1996Quentin Bell was the son of Vanessa and Clive Bell and was raised at Charleston. He grew up with the example of bohemian London before him, from his mother and Duncan Grant, to their acquaintances like Walter Sickert and Keith Bell. In 1964 he was appointed Slade professor of Fine Art at Oxford university, yet he also worked as an artist, principally in ceramics.
Bloomsbury and Beyond
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