11 Facts About Edward Wadsworth

Edward Alexander Wadsworth was an English artist, closely associated with modernist Vorticism movement.

Edward Wadsworth painted coastal views, abstracts, portraits and still-life in tempera medium and works printed using wood engraving and copper.

Edward Wadsworth studied engineering in Munich between 1906 and 1907, where he studied art in his spare time at the Knirr School.

Edward Wadsworth's work was included in Roger Fry's second Post-Impressionism Exhibition at the Grafton Galleries, 1912, in London, but he changed allegiance shortly after through friendship with Wyndham Lewis, and exhibited some futurist-derived paintings at the Futurist Exhibitions at the Dore Gallery.

Edward Wadsworth was a signatory of the Vorticist Manifesto published in BLAST the next month, and supplied a review of Kandinsky's Concerning The Spiritual In Art and images to be reproduced in the magazine.

Edward Wadsworth contributed to both, but signed up for the navy shortly after.

Edward Wadsworth spent the war in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on the island of Mudros until invalided out in 1917, transferring dazzle camouflage designs onto allied ships.

Always a fan of modern ships, Edward Wadsworth was to use nautical themes in his art for the rest of his career.

Towards the end of his life his work became increasingly strange and surreal, although Edward Wadsworth never had any formal links with the official Surrealist movement.

Edward Wadsworth died in 1949, and is buried in Brompton Cemetery.

The graphic designer Peter Saville had seen Edward Wadsworth's painting Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool and was struck by the image.