The painter Vanessa Bell initiated a step change in modern British art, bringing the bright palette and bold stylization of the Parisian avant-garde to London. She was a central figure in the Bloomsbury group, alongside members of her family and close circle including Virginia Woolf, Clive Bell, and Duncan Grant.
Vanessa Bell: Modern Living explores Bell’s radical approach to art and life through her paintings, prints, and designs for interiors, textiles, book jackets, and more, bringing her work out of the shadow of her male contemporaries while celebrating her collaborative approach. Illustrated by more than one hundred striking images drawn from the V&A’s important collection of her work, this engaging overview also considers Bell’s unique, artisanal designs for the Omega Workshops, and for Charleston Farmhouse in Sussex, her family residence, foregrounding the home as a crucial site of modernity.
Reviews
A slim, square tile of a volume perfect for summer reading… Delving into this condensed guide to [Vanessa Bell's] radical work and life is essential for anyone who, as author Rosalind McKever writes, shares Bell's belief in "the central tenet of modernism: to blend art and life."
— Hyperallergic
This charmingly colorful volume displays Bell's painting interspersed with her designs for textiles, china, book jackets for her sister Virginia Woolf, and more.
— The New Criterion
Contributors
Rosalind McKever
Author
Rosalind McKever is curator of paintings and drawings at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She specializes in modern European art, its reception in Britain and North and South America, and its relationship with fashion and design.
