VORTICIST COMPOSITION
signed Etchells lower centre in pencil; pen and indian ink and grey wash over traces of pencil on paper; 29 x 22cm; 11 1/2 x 8 3/4in (52.5 x 44cm; 20 3/4 x 17 1/4in framed)

Executed circa 1915.

Following completion of his studies at the Royal College of Art, London, Etchells spent two, formative years in Paris, where he met Picasso, Braque, and Modigliani. He returned permanently to London in 1913 holding considerable influence in the city’s artistic circles for many years. It was around this time that Etchells developed a close friendship with the artists who were becoming crystallised as the Bloomsbury Group: Roger Fry, Duncan Grant, and Vanessa and Clive Bell.

He also developed a close friendship with Wyndham Lewis, future leader of the Vorticist Group, whilst working alongside him as part of Omega Workshops. In late 1913 Lewis left Omega, accusing Roger Fry of misappropriating his work, and Etchells departed with him to join the newly founded Rebel Art Centre. Although Etchells did not sign the Vorticist manifesto, he exhibited as a Vorticist in the group's only British exhibition at the Doré Gallery in 1915. The break with Bloomsbury had enabled him to experiment through a range of artistic voices, such as expressionism and cubism, anathema to the group’s principles.

During Etchells' time spent in Paris he played an important role as a go-between for artists across the Channel, acting as conduit for the dissemination of Modernist principles and theory amongst London’s avant-garde. His most pervasive and long-lasting influence however stems from his architectural practice. He not only provided the English translation for Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture, but he was in fact responsible for London's first 'modern' building at 233 High Holborn, known as the Crawford Building. More locally to Olympia Auctions he designed the new library at Godolphin and Latymer School, Hammersmith.