Marking 100 years since Wyndham Lewis was first commissioned as an official war artist in 1917, IWM North presents Wyndham Lewis: Life, Art, War, the largest UK retrospective of the artist’s work to date.

Staged in the Imperial War Museums’ centenary year, the exhibition comprises more than 160 artworks, books, journals and pamphlets from major public, private, national and international collections.

A radical force in British art and literature, Lewis was the founder of Britain’s only true avantgarde movement, Vorticism. Lewis’s life and art encompassed one of the most violent and chaotic period in human history, from the First World War to the nuclear age. He was a controversial figure whose ideas, opinions and personality inspired, enticed and repelled in equal measure.

Established in 1917, while the First World War was still being fought, the Imperial War Museums’ (IWM) document stories of war up to the present day, and the multi-award winning IWM North in Manchester brings the museums’ national collection to northern audiences. Designed by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind to represent a globe shattered by conflict, IWM North explores how war shapes lives and encourages debate.

Imperial War Museum North

Born in Canada, Wyndham Lewis spent his youth in England and travelled Europe. In 1913 he set up The Rebel Art Centre in London and from there emerged Vorticism, and its famous manifesto, BLAST, which encapsulated the restless mood pervading Britain on the eve of the First World War. Serving as a commissioned artillery officer during the conflict, Lewis was appointed an official war artist first for the Canadians and then the British.

The exhibition goes on to chart Lewis’s ‘underground’ period of reflection and reinvention after the First World War, when his career as a writer began in earnest, as well as his period of self-imposed exile in North America in the 1940s and his descent into total blindness upon his return to London after the Second World War.

Richard Slocombe, Senior Historian at IWM and Curator of Wyndham Lewis: Life, Art, War, said: “One never really gets to the bottom of Wyndham Lewis, he is elusive and contrarian. That’s what makes him so fascinating. Lewis lived through incredibly turbulent times where war, or the threat of war, was ever present. This exhibition will shed light on the work of a highly-gifted, original, but often ignored artist and one of the great personalities of the twentieth century.”

Janet Redler, Chief Executive of Janet Redler Travel & Tourism, added: “This wonderful exhibition, which runs until 1 January 2018, documents the life and work of one of Britain’s most remarkable 20th Century artists. Housed in an iconic waterfront building, Imperial War Museum North is well worth a visit for anyone keen to know more about the impact of war in the modern world.”

If you or your group would like to include a visit to Imperial War Museum North on a tailor-made tour of England or the UK, please do contact our friendly team today.