The name Bloomsbury conjures up an image of early 20th-century bohemia whose literati included Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and Bertrand Russell. But artists also were in the circle, and Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell, critic and painter Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, and Dora Carrington formed the nucleus of visual Bloomsbury.
This group of artists was strongly influenced by the two Post-Impressionist shows at the Grafton Galleries in 1910 and 1912. The shows were the brainchildren of Fry, who saw the inherent beauty in abstract works by Picasso and Cézanne while also appreciating the art of Byzantium, the Italian Renaissance, African art, and Rembrandt. Through Fry, the Bloomsbury artists became acquainted with their contemporaries on the Continent, most importantly Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, André Derain, and the French postwar avant-garde, who gave them a grounding for their modern artistic movement.
Join curator and author Nancy Green to explore this tight-knit group of artists and friends and their place in the pantheon of 20th-century Modernism.
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