The Thyssen 'Vorticist composition': a new attribution

• Autores: Brigid Peppin
• Localización: Burlington magazine, ISSN 0007-6287, Vol. 152, Nº 1290, 2010, págs. 590-594
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • A paper proposing a new attribution for a 1915 painting called Vorticist composition, in the collection of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, that has heretofore been believed to be the only surviving Vorticist oil painting by Edward Wadsworth. While the painting appears to bear Wadsworth's signature, it lacks the artist's usual meticulousness in terms of the application of paint, and its composition shows little sign of the complex three-dimensionality seen in Wadsworth's Vorticist gouaches. In fact, the informal application of paint and the slightly imprecise geometry of the work are more typical of the output of Helen Saunders, an artist who, like Wadsworth, was a full participant in the Vorticist movement. The author suggests that the painting was, in fact, executed by Saunders, and that the “signature” of Wadsworth was added later, after the painting emerged, unsigned, in the late 1970s.