Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Vanessa Bell: The Life and Art of a Bloomsbury Radical

Vanessa Bell: The Life and Art of a Bloomsbury Radical

Hitchmough, Wendy

Hardcover

Art HistoryGeneral ArtIndividual Artists

Publisher Price: $40.00

ISBN10: 0300269218
ISBN13: 9780300269215
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: Mar 11 2025
Pages: 352
Weight: 2.26
Height: 1.24 Width: 6.42 Depth: 9.38
Language: English
One of Britain's most radical and influential artists working in the first decades of the twentieth century, Vanessa Bell was a pioneer for professional women

Vanessa Bell was a leading figure within the Bloomsbury Group and known for her unconventional lifestyle, but her work as a painter, designer, and decorator has often been overlooked and relegated within the bombastic, male-dominated field of British modernism.

With new research, including previously unpublished letters, Wendy Hitchmough explores the ways in which Bell (1879-1961) forged new pathways as a modernist woman. Writing openly about depression and mental health at a time when the subject was stigmatised, as well as challenging taboos surrounding women's bodies, Bell exploited the patriarchal society that oppressed her. She responded to the nudes and pastoral scenes of Cézanne, Gauguin, Picasso, and Matisse with themes of miscarriage and motherhood. She exhibited with her partner, Duncan Grant, and comparisons between their parallel careers highlight the gender disparities that shaped her life and work.

Vanessa Bell: The Life and Art of a Bloomsbury Radical celebrates the artist's trailblazing approach to art as well as life, her rejection of conventions, and the challenge she posed to the structures of early twentieth-century society.

Also in

Art History

View All